UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFOKMa 

AT 

IjOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


AN   INTRODUCTION  TO 

SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


BY 

WILLIAM  McDOUGALL 

PROFESSOR   OF    PSYCHOLOGY   IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY, 
I>TE   READER   IN  MENTAL   PHILOSOPHY   IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   OXFOKO 


FOURTEENTH   EDITION 


BOSTON 
JOHN  W.  LUCE  y  CO. 


Copyright  1921 
By  John  W.  Luce  &  Ca 


710 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

^  PAGE 

^  INTRODUCTION I 

^  SECTION  I 

THE  MENTAL  CHARACTERS  OF  MAN  OF  PRIMARY 
IMPORTANCE  FOR  HIS  LIFE  IN  SOCIETY 

CHAPTER  W^' 

THE   NATURE   OF   INSTINCTS   AND   THEIR   PLACE   IN   THE  CONSTI- 
TUTION  OF  THE   HUMAN   MIND 20 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  AND  THE  PRIMARY  EMOTIONS  OF  MAN         47 

^^  CHAPTER  IV 

SOME  GENERAL  OR  NON-SPECIFIC  INNATE  TENDENCIES    ...  93 

CHAPTER  V 

THE   NATURE   OF   THE   SENTIMENTS   AND  THE   CONSTITUTION   OF 

SOME   OF   THE   COMPLEX   EMOTIONS 1 25 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE    DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE    SENTIMENTS 164 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  OF  THE  SELF-REGARD- 
ING SENTIMENT 179 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VIII 

PAGE 
THE  ADVANCE   TO  THE   HIGHER   PLANE   OF   SOCIAL  CONDUCT       .       215 

CHAPTER  IX 

VOLITION 234 

SECTION  II 

THE  OPERATION  OF  THE  PRIMARY  TENDENCIES  OF  THE 
HUMAN  MIND  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  SOCIETIES 

CHAPTER  X 
THE  REPRODUCTIVE  AND  THE  PARENTAL  INSTINCTS    ....      27 1 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE   INSTINCT   OF   PUGNACITY 285 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE   GREGARIOUS   INSTINCT 3O3 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   INSTINCTS   THROUGH   WHICH   RELIGIOUS   CONCEPTIONS   AF- 
FECT  SOCIAL  LIFE 309 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  INSTINCTS  OF  ACQUISITION  AND  CONSTRUCTION         .       .       .      329 

CHAPTER  XV 

IMITATION,   PLAY,   AND   HABIT 332 

CHAPTER  XVI 

THEORIES   OF   ACTION 359 

DERIVED    EMOTIONS 393 

INDEX 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


CHAPTER  I 


INTRODUCTION 


AMONG  Students  of  the  social  sciences  there  has 
always  been  a  certain  number  who  have  recognised 
the  fact  that  some  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and 
of  its  modes  of  operation  is  an  essential  part  of  their 
equipment,  and  that  the  successful  development  of  the 
social  sciences  must  be  dependent  upon  the  fulness  and 
accuracy  of  such  knowledge.  These  propositions  are  so 
obviously  true  that  any  formal  attempt  to  demonstrate 
them  is  superfluous.  Those  who  do  not  accept  them  as 
soon  as  they  are  made  will  not  be  convinced  of  their 
truth  by  any  chain  of  formal  reasoning.  It  is,  then,  a 
remarkable  fact  that  psychology,  the  science  which  claims 
to  formulate  the  body  of  ascertained  truths  about  the 
constitution  and  working  of  the  mind,  and  which  en- 
deavours to  refine  and  to  add  to  this  knowledge,  has 
not  been  generally  and  practically  recognised  as  the  es- 
sential common  foundation  on  which  all  the  social 
sciences — ethics,  economics,  political  science,  philosophy 
of  history,  sociology,  and  cultural  anthropology,  and  the 
more  special  social  sciences,  such  as  the  sciences  of  re- 
ligion, of  law,  of  education,  and  of  art — must  be  built 
up.  Of  the  workers  in  these  sciences,  some,  like  Comte, 
and,  at  the  present  time,  M'.  Durkheim,  repudiate  the 


2  SOCIAL  PSYCHO'LOGY 

claim  of  psychology  to  such  recognition.  Some  do  lip 
service  to  psychology,  but  in  practice  ignore  it,  and  will 
sit  down  to  write  a  treatise  on  morals  or  economics,  or 
any  other  of  the  social  sciences,  cheerfully  confessing 
that  they  know  nothing  of  psychology.  A  certain  num- 
ber, perhaps  the  majority,  of  recent  writers  on  social 
topics  recognise  the  true  position  of  psychology,  but  in 
practice  are  content  to  take  as  their  psychological  founda- 
tions the  vague  and  extremely  misleading  psychology 
embodied  in  common  speech,  with  the  addition  of  a  few 
hasty  assumptions  about  the  mind  made  to  suit  their 
particular  purposes.  There  are  signs,  however,  that  this 
regrettable  state  of  affairs  is  about  to  pass  away,  that 
psychology  will  before  long  be  accorded  in  universal 
practice  the  position  at  the  base  of  the  social  sciences 
which  the  more  clear-sighted  have  long  seen  that  it 
ought  to  occupy. 

Since  this  volume  is  designed  to  promote  this  change 
of  practice,  it  is  fitting  that  it  should  open  with  a  brief 
inquiry  into  the  causes  of  the  anomalous  state  of  affairs 
at  present  obtaining  and  with  some  indication  of  the 
way  in  which  it  is  hoped  that  the  change  may  be  brought 
about.  For  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  lack  of 
practical  recognition  of  psychology  by  the  workers  in  the 
social  sciences  has  been  in  the  main  due  to  its  deficiencies, 
and  that  the  only  way  of  establishing  it  in  its  true  place 
is  to  make  good  these  deficiencies.  What,  then,  are  these 
deficiencies,  and  why  have  they  so  long  persisted?  We 
may  attempt  very  briefly  to  indicate  the  answers  to  these 
questions  without  presuming  to  apportion  any  blame  for 
the  long  continuance  of  these  deficiencies  between  the 
professed  psychologists  and  the  workers  in  the  social 
sjcrrees. 

The  department  of  psychology  that  is  of  primary  im- 


INTRODUCTION  3 

portance  for  the  social  sciences  is  that  which  deals  with 
the  springs  of  human  action,  the  impulses  and  motives 
that  sustain  mental  and  bodily  activity  and  regulate 
conduct;  and  this,  of  all  the  departments  of  psychology, 
is  the  one  that  has  remained  in  the  most  backward  state, 
in  which  the  greatest  obscurity,  vagueness,  and  confu- 
sion still  reign.  The  answers  to  such  problems  as  the 
proper  classification  of  conscious  states,  the  analysis 
of  them  into  their  elements,  the  nature  of  these  elements 
and  the  laws  of  the  compounding  of  them,  have  but 
little  bearing  upon  the  social  sciences ;  the  same  may 
be  said  of  the  range  of  problems  connected  with  the  rela- 
tions of  soul  and  body,  of  psychical  and  physical  proc- 
ess, of  consciousness  and  brain  processes ;  and  also  of 
the  discussion  of  the  more  purely  intellectual  processes, 
of  the  way  we  arrive  at  the  perception  of  relations  of 
time  and  place  or  of  likeness  and  difference,  of  the  classi- 
fication and  description  of  the  intellectual  process  of 
ideation,  conception,  comparison,  and  abstraction,  and 
of  their  relations  to  one  another.  Not  these  processes 
themselves,  but  only  the  results  or  products  of  these  proc- 
esses— the  knowledge  or  system  of  ideas  and  beliefs 
achieved  by  them,  and  the  way  in  which  these  ideas  and 
beliefs  regulate  conduct  and  determine  social  institu- 
tions and  the  relations  of  men  to  one  another  in  society 
are  of  immediate  importance  for  the  social  sciences.  It 
is  the  mental  forces,  the  sources  of  energy,  which  set 
the  ends  and  sustain  the  course  of  all  human  activity — 
of  which  forces  the  intellectual  processes  are  but  the 
servants,  instruments,  or  means — that  must  be  clearly  de- 
fined, and  whose  history  in  the  race  and  in  the  individual 
must  be  made  clear,  before  the  social  sciences  can  build 
tipon  a  firm  psychological  foundation.  Now,  it  is  with  the 
questions  of  the  former  classes  that  psychologists  have 


4  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

chiefly  concerned  themselves  and  in  regard  to  which  they 
have  made  the  most  progress  towards  a  consistent  and 
generally  acceptable  body  of  doctrine :  and  they  have 
unduly  neglected  these  more  socially  important  problems. 
This  has  been  the  result  of  several  conditions,  a  re- 
sult which  we,  looking  back  upon  the  history  of  the 
sciences,  can  see  to  have  been  inevitable.  It  was  inevit- 
able that,  when  men  began  to  reflect  upon  the  complex 
phenomena  of  social  life,  they  should  have  concentrated 
their  attention  upon  the  problems  immediately  presented, 
and  should  have  sought  to  explain  them  deductively  from 
more  or  less  vaguely  conceived  principles  that  they  enter- 
tained they  knew  not  why  or  how,  principles  that  were 
the  formulations  of  popular  conceptions,  slowly  grown 
up  in  the  course  of  countless  generations  and  rendered 
more  explicit,  but  hardly  less  obscure,  by  the  labours 
of  theologians  and  metaphysicians.  And  when,  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  modern  principles  of  scientific  method  began 
to  be  generally  accepted  and  to  be  applied  to  all  or  most 
objects  of  human  speculation,  and  the  various  social 
sciences  began  to  be  marked  ofif  from  one  another  along 
the  modern  lines,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  workers  in 
each  department  of  social  science  should  have  continued 
in  the  same  way,  attempting  to  explain  social  phenomena 
from  proximate  prmciples  which  they  falsely  conceived 
to  be  fundamental,  rather  than  to  obtain  a  deeper  knowl- 
edge of  the  fundamental  constitution  of  the  human  mind. 
It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  generations  of  workers, 
whose  primary  interest  it  was  to  lay  down  general  rules 
for  the  guidance  of  human  activity  in  the  great  fields  of 
legislation,  of  government,  of  private  and  public  conduct, 
should  have  deliberately  put  aside  the  attempt  to  con- 
struct the  sciences  of  these  departments  of  life,  leaving 


INTRODUCTION  5 

them  to  the  efforts  of  after-coming  generations,  while 
they  devoted  themselves  to  the  preparatory  work  of  in- 
vestigating the  individual  mind,  in  order  to  secure  the 
basis  of  psychological  truth  on  which  the  labours  of  their 
successors  might  rear  the  social  sciences.  The  problems 
confronting  them  were  too  urgent ;  customs,  laws,  and  in- 
stitutions demanded  theoretical  justification,  and  those 
who  called  out  for  social  reform  sought  to  strengthen 
their  case  with  theoretical  demonstrations  of  its  justice 
and  of  its  conformity  with  the  accepted  principles  of 
human  nature. 

And  even  if  these  early  workers  in  the  social  sciences 
had  made  this  impossible  self-denying  ordinance,  it  would 
not  have  been  possible  for  them  to  achieve  the  psy- 
chology that  was  needed.  For  a  science  still  more 
fundamental,  one  whose  connection  with  the  social 
phenomena  they  sought  to  explain  or  justify  was  still 
more  remote  and  obscure,  had  yet  to  be  created — namely, 
the  science  of  biology.  It  is  only  comparative  and  evolu- 
tionary psychology  that  can  provide  the  needed  basis ; 
and  this  could  not  be  created  before  the  work  of  Dar- 
win had  convinced  men  of  the  continuity  of  human  with 
animal  evolution  as  regards  all  bodily  characters,  and 
had  prepared  the  way  for  the  quickly  following  recogni- 
tion of  the  similar  continuity  of  man's  mental  evolution 
with  that  of  the  animal  world. 

Hence  the  workers  in  each  of  the  social  sciences,  ap- 
proaching their  social  problems  in  the  absence  of  any 
established  body  of  psychological  truth  and  being  com- 
pelled to  make  certain  assumptions  about  the  mind,  made 
them  ad  hoc;  and  in  this  way  they  provided  the  indis- 
pensable minimum  of  psychological  doctrine  required  by 
each  of  them.  Many  of  these  assumptions  contained 
sufficient  truth  to  give  them  a  certain  plausibility;  but 


6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

they  were  usually  of  such  a  sweeping  character  as  to 
leave  no  room  for,  and  to  disguise  the  need  for,  more 
accurate  and  detailed  psychological  analysis.  And  not 
only  were  these  assumptions  made  by  those  who  had  not 
prepared  themselves  for  the  task  by  long  years  of  study 
of  the  mind  in  all  its  many  aspects  and  by  the  many 
possible  avenues  of  approach,  but  they  were  not  made 
with  the  single-hearted  aim  of  discovering  the  truth; 
rather  they  were  commonly  made  under  the  bias  of  an 
interest  in  establishing  some  normative  doctrine;  the 
search  for  what  is  was  clogged  and  misled  at  every  step 
by  the  desire  to  establish  some  preconceived  view  as  to 
what  ought  to  be.  When,  then,  psychology  began  very 
slowly  and  gradually  to  assert  its  status  as  an  inde- 
pendent science,  it  found  all  that  part  of  its  province 
which  has  the  most  immediate  and  important  bearing 
on  the  social  sciences  already  occupied  by  the  fragmen- 
tary and  misleading  psychological  assumptions  of  the 
workers  in  these  sciences ;  and  these  workers  naturally 
resented  all  attempts  of  psychology  to  encroach  upon 
the  territory  they  had  learned  to  look  upon  as  their  own ; 
for  such  attempts  would  have  endangered  their  systems. 
The  psychologists,  endeavouring  to  define  their  science 
and  to  mark  it  off  from  other  sciences,  were  thus  led  to 
accept  a  too  narrow  view  of  its  scope  and  methods  and 
applications.  They  were  content  for  the  most  part  to 
define  it  as  the  science  of  consciousness,  and  to  regard 
introspection  as  its  only  method;  for  the  introspective 
analysis  and  description  of  conscious  states  was  a  part 
of  the  proper  work  of  psychology  that  had  not  been  un- 
dertaken by  any  other  of  the  sciences.  The  insistence 
upon  introspection  as  the  one  method  of  the  science 
tended  to  prolong  the  predominance  of  this  narrow  and 
paralysing  view  of  the  scope  of  the  science;  for  the  life 


INTRODUCTION  7 

of  emotion  and  the  play  of  motives  is  the  part  of  our 
mental  life  which  offers  the  least  advantageous  field  for 
introspective  observation  and  description.  The  cogni- 
tive or  intellectual  processes,  on  the  other  hand,  present 
a  rich  and  varied  content  of  consciousness  which  lends 
itself  well  to  introspective  discrimination,  analysis,  and 
description;  in  comparison  with  it,  the  emotional  and 
conative  consciousness  has  but  little  variety  of  content, 
and  that  little  is  extremely  obscure  and  elusive  of  intro- 
spection. 

Then,  shortly  after  the  Darwinian  ideas  had  revolu- 
tionised the  biological  sciences,  and  when  it  might  have 
been  hoped  that  psychologists  would  have  been  led  to 
take  a  wider  view  of  their  science  and  to  assert  its  rights 
to  its  whole  field,  the  introduction  of  the  experimental 
methods  of  introspection  absorbed  the  energies  of  a  large 
proportion  of  the  workers  in  the  re-survey,  by  the  new 
and  more  accurate  methods,  of  the  ground  already 
worked  by  the  method  of  simple  introspection. 

Let  us  note  some  instances  of  the  unfortunate  results 
of  this  premature  annexation  of  the  most  important  and 
obscure  region  of  psychology  by  the  sciences  which 
should,  in  the  logical  order  of  things,  have  found  the 
fundamental  psychological  truths  ready  to  their  hands 
as  a  firm  basis  for  their  constructions. 

Ethics  affords  perhaps  the  most  striking  example ; 
for  any  writer  on  this  subject  necessarily  encounters 
psychological  problems  on  every  hand,  and  treatises  on 
ethics  are  apt  to  consist  vei-y  largely  of  amateur  psy- 
chologising.  Among  the  earlier  moralists  the  lack  of 
psychological  insight  led  to  such  doctrines  as  that  of 
certain  Stoics,  to  the  effect  that  the  wise  and  good  man 
should  seek  to  eradicate  the  emotions  from  his  bosom ;  or 
that  of  Kant,  to  the  effect  that  the  wise  and  good  man 


8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

should  be  free  from  desire.  Putting  aside,  however,  these 
quaint  notions  of  the  earlier  writers,  we  may  note  that 
in  modern  times  three  false  and  hasty  assumptions  of 
the  kind  stigmatised  above  have  played  leading  roles  and 
have  furnished  a  large  part  of  the  matter  with  which 
ethical  controversy  has  been  busied  during  the  nine- 
teenth century.  First  in  importance  perhaps  as  a  topic 
for  controversy  was  the  doctrine  known  as  psychological 
hedonism,  the  doctrine  that  the  motives  of  all  human 
activity  are  the  desire  of  pleasure  and  the  aversion  to 
pain.  Hand  in  hand  with  this  went  the  false  assump- 
tion that  happiness  and  pleasure  are  synonymous  terms. 
These  two  false  assumptions  were  adopted  as  the  psy- 
chological foundation  of  utilitarianism;  they  rendered 
that  doctrine  repugnant  to  many  of  the  best  minds  and 
drove  them  to  fall  back  upon  vague  and  mystical  concep- 
tions. Of  these  the  old  conception  of  a  special  faculty  of 
moral  intuition,  a  conscience,  a  moral  sense  or  instinct, 
was  the  most  important;  and  this  was  the  third  of  the 
trio  of  false  psychological  assumptions  on  which  ethical 
systems  were  based.  Many  of  those  who  adopted  some 
form  of  this  last  assumption  were  in  the  habit  of  sup- 
plementing it  by  similar  assumptions  hastily  made  to  af- 
ford explanations  of  any  tendencies  they  noted  in  human 
conduct  which  their  master  principle  was  inadequate 
to  meet ;  they  postulated  strange  instincts  of  all  kinds  as 
Hghtly  and  easily  as  a  conjurer  produces  eggs  from  a  hat 
or  a  phrenologist  discovers  bumps  on  a  head. 

It  is  instructive  to  note  that  as  recently  as  the  year 
1893  the  late  Professor  H.  Sidgwick,  one  of  the  leaders 
of  the  ethical  thought  of  his  time,  still  inverted  the  prob- 
lem ;  like  his  predecessors  he  assumed  that  moral  or 
reasonable  action  is  normal  and  natural  to  man  in  virtue 
of  some  vaguely  conceived  principle,  and  in  all  serious- 


INTRODUCTION  9 

ness  wrote  an  article^  to  prove  that  "unreasonable  ac- 
tion" is  possible  and  is  actually  achieved  occasionall3% 
and  to  explain  if  possible  this  strange  anomalous  fact. 
He  quotes  Bentham's  dictum  that  "on  the  occasion  of 
every  act  he  exercises  every  human  being  is  led  to  pur- 
sue that  line  of  conduct  which,  according  to  his  view  of 
the  case,  taken  by  him  at  the  moment,  will  be  in  the 
highest  degree  contributory  to  his  own  greatest  hap- 
piness." He  points  out  that,  although  J.  S.  Mill  admit- 
ted certain  exceptions  to  this  principle,  his  general  view 
was  that  "to  desire  anything,  except  in  proportion  as  the 
idea  of  it  is  pleasant,  is  a  physical  impossibility."  So 
that,  according  to  this  school,  any  action  of  an  indi- 
vidual that  does  not  tend  to  produce  for  him  the  maxi- 
mum of  pleasure  can  only  arise  from  an  error  of  judg- 
ment as  to  the  relative  quantities  of  pleasure  that  will  be 
secured  by  different  lines  of  action.  And,  since,  accord- 
ing to  this  school,  all  actions  ought  to  be  directed  to  se- 
curing a  maximum  of  pleasure,  action  of  any  other  kind 
is  not  only  unreasonable  action,  but  also  immoral  action ; 
for  it  is  action  in  a  way  other  than  the  way  in  which 
the  individual  knows  he  ought  to  act.  Sidgwick  then 
goes  on  to  show  that  the  doctrine  that  unreasonable  ac- 
tion (or  wilful  action  not  in  accordance  with  what  the  in- 
dividual knows  that  he  ought  to  do)  is  exceptional, 
paradoxical,  or  abnormal  is  not  peculiar  to  the  utilitarians, 
but  is  common  also  to  their  opponents;  he  takes  as  an 
example  T.  H.  Green,  who  "still  lays  down  as  broadly 
as  Bentham  that  every  person  in  every  moral  action, 
virtuous  or  vicious,  presents  to  himself  some  possible 
state  or  achievement  of  his  own  as  for  the  time  his 
greatest  good,  and  acts  for  the  sake  of  that  good,  and 
that  this  is  how  he  ought  to  act."  So  that  Green  only 
'  "Unreasonable   Action,"   Mind,    N.S.,    vol.    iii. 


lo  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

differs  from  Bentham  and  Mill  in  putting  good  in  the 
place  of  pleasure,  and  for  the  rest  makes  the  same 
grotesquely  false  assumption  as  they  do.  Sidgwick  then, 
instead  of  attacking  and  rejecting  as  radically  false  the 
conception  of  human  motives  common  to  both  classes 
of  his  predecessors,  goes  on  in  all  seriousness  to  offer  a 
psychological  explanation  of  the  paradox  that  men  do 
sometimes  act  unreasonably  and  otherwise  than  they 
ought  Jo  act.  That  is  to  say,  Sidgwick,  like  those  whom 
he  criticises,  accepts  the  doctrine  that  men  normally 
and  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  act  reasonably  and  as 
they  ought  to  act,  in  virtue  of  some  unexplained  prin- 
ciple of  their  constitution,  and  defines  as  a  problem 
for  solution  the  fact  that  they  sometimes  act  otherwise. 
But  the  truth  is  that  men  are  moved  by  a  variety  of  im- 
pulses whose  nature  has  been  determined  through  long 
ages  of  the  evolutionary  process  without  reference  to 
the  life  of  men  in  civilised  societies  ;  and  the  psychological 
problem  we  have  to  solve,  and  with  which  this  book  is 
mainly  concerned,  is — How  can  we  account  for  the  fact 
that  men  so  moved  ever  come  Jii_a£l_as--the^L_ought,  or 
morally  and  reasonably? 

One  is  driven  to  suppose  that  the  minds  of  the  moral 
philosophers  who  maintain  these  curious  views  as  to  the 
sources  and  nature  of  human  conduct  are  either  consti- 
tutionally devoid  of  the  powerful  impulses  that  so  often 
move  ordinary  men  to  actions  which  they  know  to  be 
morally  wrong  and  against  their  true  interests  and  de- 
structive of  their  happiness,  or  so  completely  moralised 
by  strict  self-discipline  that  these  powerful  impulses  are 
completely  subordinated  and  hardly  make  themselves  felt. 
But,  if  either  alternative  is  true,  it  is  unfortunate  that 
their  peculiar  constitutions  should  have  led  these  philoso- 


INTRODUCTION  ii 

phers   to   base   the   social   sciences    on  profoundly    fal- 
lacious psychological  doctrines. 

Political  economy  suffered  hardly  less  from  the  crude 
nature  of  the  psychological  assumptions  from  which  it 
professed  to  deduce  the  explanations  of  its  facts  and  its 
prescriptions  for  economic  legislation.  It  would  be  a 
libel,  not  altogether  devoid  of  truth,  to  say  that  the 
classical  political  economy  was  a  tissue  of  false  con- 
clusions drawn  from  false  psychological  assumptions. 
And  certainly  the  recent  progress  in  economic  doctrine 
has  largely  consisted  in,  or  resulted  from,  the  recognition 
of  the  need  for  a  less  inadequate  psychological  basis. 
An  example  illustrating  these  two  facts  will  be  not  out 
of  place.  The  great  assumption  of  the  classical  political 
economy  was  that  man  is  a  reasonable  being  who  al- 
ways intelligently  seeks  his  own  good  or  is  guided  in  all 
his  activities  by  enlightened  self-interest;  and  this  was 
usually  combined  with  the  psychological  hedonism  which 
played  so  large  a  part  in  degrading  utilitarian  ethics; 
that  is  to  say,  good  was  identified  with  pleasure.  From 
these  assumptions,  which  contained  sufficient  truth  to  be 
plausible,  it  was  deduced,  logically  enough,  that  free 
competition  in  an  open  market  will  secure  a  supply  of 
goods  at  the  lowest  possible  rate.  But  mankind  is  only 
a  little  bit  reasonable  and  to  a  great  extent  very  unin- 
telligently  moved  in  quite  unreasonable  ways.  The  econ- 
omists had  neglected  to  take  account  of  the  suggesti- 
bility of  men  which  renders  the  arts  of  the  advertiser,  of 
the  "pushing"  of  goods  generally,  so  profitable  and  ef- 
fective. Only  on  taking  this  character  of  men  into  ac- 
count can  we  understand  such  facts  as  that  sewing  ma- 
chines, which  might  be  sold  at  a  fair  profit  for  £5,  find 
a  large  sale  at  ii2,  while  equally  good  ones  are  sold  in 
the  same  market  at  less  than  half  the  price.    The  same 


12  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

deduction  as  to  competition  and  prices  has  been  signally 
falsified  by  those  cases  in  which  the  establishment  by 
trusts  or  corporations  of  virtual  monopolies  in  articles 
of  universal  consumption  has  led  to  a  reduction  of  the 
market  prices  of  those  commodities ;  or  again,  by  the  fact 
that  so  enormous  a  proportion  of  the  price  paid  for  goods 
goes  into  the  pockets  of  small  shopkeepers  and  other 
economically  pernicious  middlemen. 

As  an  example  of  the  happy  effect  of  the  recent  in- 
troduction of  less  crude  psychology  into  economic  dis- 
cussions, it  will  suffice  to  mention  Mrs.  Bosanquet's  work 
on  "The  Standard  of  Life." 

In  political  science  no  less  striking  illustrations  may 
be  found.  What  other  than  an  error  due  to  false 
psychological  assumptions  was  the  cosmopolitanism  of 
the  Manchester  school,  with  its  confident  prophecy  of  the 
universal  brotherhood  of  man  brought  about  by  en- 
lightened self-interest  assigning  to  each  region  and  peo- 
ple the  work  for  which  it  was  best  suited  ?  This  prophecy 
has  been  notoriously  falsified  by  a  great  outburst  of  na- 
tional spirit,  which  has  played  the  chief  part  in  shap- 
ing European  history  during  the  last  half^entury. 

Again,  in  the  philosophy  of  history  we  have  the  same 
method  of  deduction  from  hasty,  incomplete,  and  mis- 
leading, if  not  absolutely  false,  assumptions  as  to  the 
human  mind.  We  may  take  as  a  fair  example  the  as- 
sumptions that  V.  Cousin  made  the  foundation  of  his 
philosophy  of  history.  Cousin,  after  insisting  strongly 
upon  the  fundamental  importance  of  psychological  an- 
alysis for  the  interpretation  of  history,  proceeds  as  fol- 
lows :^  "The  various  manifestations  and  phases  of  social 
life  are  all  traced  back  to  tendencies  of  human  nature 

*  I  quote  from  Professor  Flint's  "History  of  the  Philosophy  of 
History,"  p.  456. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

from  which  they  spring,  from  five  fundamental  wants 
each  of  which  has  corresponding  to  it  a  general  idea. 
The  idea  of  the  useful  gives  rise  to  mathematical  and 
physical  science,  industry,  and  political  economy ;  the 
idea  of  the  just  to  civil  society,  the  State,  and  juris- 
prudence; the  idea  of  the  beautiful  to  art;  the  idea  of 
God  to  religion  and  worship ;  and  the  idea  of  truth  in 
itself,  in  its  highest  degree  and  under  its  purest  form,  to 
philosophy.  These  ideas  are  argued  to  be  simple  and 
indecomposable,  to  coexist  in  every  mind,  to  constitute 
the  whole  foundation  of  humanity,  and  to  follow  in  the 
order  mentioned."  No  better  illustration  of  the  truth  of 
the  foregoing  remarks  could  be  found.  We  have  here 
the  spectacle  of  a  philosopher,  who  exerted  a  great  in- 
fluence on  the  thought  of  his  own  country,  and  who 
rightly  conceived  the  relation  of  psychology  to  the  social 
sciences,  but  who,  in  the  absence  of  any  adequate  psy- 
chology, contents  himself  with  concocting  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment  the  most  flimsy  substitute  for  it  in  the 
form  of  these  five  assumptions. 

As  for  the  philosophies  of  history  that  make  no  pre- 
tence of  a  psychological  foundation,  they  are  sufficiently 
characterised  by  M.  Fouillee  who,  when  writing  of  the 
development  of  sociology,  says :  "Elle  est  nee  en  eflfet 
d'une  etude  en  grande  partie  mythique  ou  poetique :  je 
veux  parler  de  la  philosophie  de  I'histoire  telle  que  les 
metaphysiciens  ou  les  theologiens  Tent  d'abord  congue, 
et  qui  est  a  la  sociologie  positive  ce  que  I'alchimie  fut 
a  la  chimie,  I'astrologie  a  I'astronomie."^ 

From  the  science  of  jurisprudence  we  may  take,  as  a 
last  illustration,  the  retributive  doctrine  of  punishment, 
which  is  still  held  by  a  considerable  number  of  writers. 
This  barbarous  conception   of   the  grounds   on   which 

*"La  Science  Sociale  Contemporaine,"  p.  380.     Paris,  1904. 


14  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

punishment  is  justified  arises  naturally  from  the  doc- 
trine of  free-will;  to  any  one  who  holds  this  doctrine  in 
any  thorough-going  form  there  can  be  no  other  rational 
view  of  punishment  than  the  retributive ;  for  since, 
according  to  this  assumption,  where  human  action  is 
concerned,  the  future  course  of  events  is  not  determined 
by  the  present,  punishment  cannot  be  administered  in 
the  forward-looking  attitude  with  a  view  to  deterrence 
or  to  moral  improvement,  but  only  in  the  backward-look- 
ing vengeful  attitude  of  retribution.  The  fuller  becomes 
our  insight  into  the  springs  of  human  conduct,  the  more 
impossible  does  it  become  to  maintain  this  antiquated 
doctrine;  so  that  here,  too,  progress  depends  upon  the 
improvement  of  psychology. 

One  might  take  each  of  the  social  sciences  in  turn 
and  illustrate  in  each  case  the  great  need  for  a  true 
doctrine  of_  human  motives.  But,  instead  of  doing  that,  I 
will  merely  sum  up  on  the  issue  of  the  work  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  as  follows : — During  the  last  century  most 
of  the  workers  in  the  social  sciences  were  of  two  par- 
ties— those  on  the  one  hand  who  with  the  ultilitarians 
reduced  all  motives  to  the  search  for  pleasure  and  the 
avoidance  of  pain,  and  those  on  the  other  hand  who,  re- 
coiling from  this  hedonistic  doctrine,  sought  the  main- 
spring of  conduct  in  some  vaguely  conceived  intuitive 
faculty  variously  named  the  conscience,  the  moral  faculty, 
instinct,  or  sense.  Before  the  close  of  the  century  the 
doctrines  of  both  of  these  parties  were  generally  seen  to 
be  fallacious ;  but  no  satisfactory  substitute  for  them  was 
generally  accepted,  and  by  the  majority  of  psychologists 
nothing  better  was  offered  to  fill  the  gap  than  a  mere 
word,  "the  will,"  or  some  such  phrase  as  "the  tendency 
of  ideas  to  self-realisation."  On  the  other  hand.  Dar- 
win, in  the  "Descent  of  Man"  (1871)  first  enunciated  the 


INTRODUCTION  15 

true  doctrine  of  human  motives,  and  showed  how  we 
must  proceed,  relying  chiefly  upon  the  comparative  and 
natural  history  method,  if  we  would  arrive  at  a  fuller 
understanding  of  them.  But  Darwin's  own  account  suf- 
fered from  the  deference  he  paid,  under  protest,  to  the 
doctrine  of  psychological  hedonism,  still  dominant  at 
that  time;  and  his  lead  has  been  followed  by  compara- 
tively few  psychologists,  and  but  little  has  yet  been  done 
to  carry  forward  the  work  he  began  and  to  refine  upon 
his  first  rough  sketch  of  the  history  of  human  motives. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  illustrate  the  point  of  view 
from  which  this  volume  has  been  written,  and  to  en- 
force the  theme  of  this  introductory  chapter,  namely, 
that  psychologists  must  cease  to  be  content  with  the 
sterile  and  narrow  conception  of  their  science  as  the 
science  of  consciousness,  and  must  boldly  assert  its  claim 
to  be  the  positive  science  of  the  mind  in  all  its  aspects 
and  modes  of  functioning,  or,  as  I  would  prefer  to  say, 
the  positive  science  of  conduct  or  behaviour.^  Psy- 
chology must  not  regard  the  introspective  description 
of  the  stream  of  consciousness  as  its  whole  task,  but 
only  as  a  preliminary  part  of  its  work.  Such  intro- 
spective description,  such  "pure  psychology,"  can  never 
constitute  a  science,  or  at  least  can  never  rise  to  the  level 
of  an  explanatory  science;  and  it  can  never  in  itself  be 
of  any  great  value  to  the  social  sciences.  The  basis 
required  by  all  of  them  is  a  comparative  and  phys- 
iological psychology  relying  largely  on  objective 
methods,  the  observation  of  the  behaviour  of  men  and  of 
animals  of  all  varieties  under  all  possible  conditions  of 
health  and  disease.  It  must  take  the  largest  possible  view 
of  its  scope  and  functions,  and  must  be  an  evolutionary 

^  This  definition  of  psychology  was  proposed  in  my  "Primer 
of  Physiological  Psychology."     London,  1905. 


i6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

natural  history  of  mind.  Above  all,  it  must  aim  at  pro- 
viding a  full  and  accurate  account  of  those  most  funda- 
mental elements  of  our  constitution,  the  innate  tendencies 
to  thought  and  action  that  constitute  the  native  basis  of 
the  mind. 

Happily  this  more  generous  conception  of  psychology 
is  beginning  to  prevail.  The  mind  is  no  longer  regarded 
as  a  mere  tabula  rasa  or  magic  mirror  whose  function 
it  is  passively  to  receive  impressions  from  the  outer 
world  or  to  throw  imperfect  reflections  of  its  objects — 
"a  row  of  moving  shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go." 
Nor  are  we  any  longer  content  to  supplement  this  Lockian 
conception  of  mind  with  only  two  principles  of  intrinsic 
activity,  that  of  the  association  and  reproduction  of 
ideas,  and  that  of  the  tendency  to  seek  pleasure  and  to 
avoid  pain.  The  discovery  is  being  made  that  the  old 
psychologising  was  like  the  playing  of  "Hamlet"  with 
the  Prince  of  Denmark  left  out,  or  like  describing  steam- 
engines  while  ignoring  the  fact  of  the  presence  and 
fundamental  role  of  the  fire  or  other  source  of  heat. 
On  every  hand  we  hear  it  said  that  the  static,  descrip- 
tive, purely  analytic  psychology  must  give  place  to  a 
dynamic,  functional,  voluntaristic  view  of  mind. 

A  second  very  important  advance  of  psychology  to- 
wards usefulness  is  due  to  the  increasing  recognition  of 
the  extent  to  which  the  adult  human  mind  is  the  product 
of  the  moulding  influence  exerted  by  the  social  en- 
vironment, and  of  the  fact  that  the  strictly  individual 
human  mind,  with  which  alone  the  older  introspective 
and  descriptive  psychology  concerned  itself,  is  an  ab- 
straction merely  and  has  no  real  existence. 

It  is  needless  to  attempt  to  describe  the  many  and  com- 
plex influences  through  which  these  changes  are  being 
effected.     It  sufiices  to  note  the  happy  fact  and  briefly 


INTRODUCTION  17 

to  indicate  the  way  in  which  this  book  aims  to  contrib- 
ute its  mite  towards  the  building  up  of  a  psychology  that 
will  at  last  furnish  the  much  needed  basis  of  the  social 
sciences  and  of  the  comprehensive  science  of  sociology. 
The  first  section  begins  with  the  elucidation  of  that  part 
of  the  native  basis  of  the  mind  which  is  the  source  of  all 
our  bodily  and  mental  activity.  In  Chapter  II.  I  have 
attempted  to  render  as  clear  and  definite  as  possible  the 
conception  of  an  instinct,  and  to  make  clear  the  relation 
of  instinct  to  mental  process  and  the  fundamental  im- 
portance of  the  instincts;  in  the  third  chapter  I  have 
sought  to  enumerate  and  briefly  to  define  the  principal 
human  instincts ;  and  in  the  fourth  I  have  defined  cer- 
tain general  functional  tendencies  which,  though  they 
are  sometimes  classed  with  the  instincts,  are  of  a  differ- 
ent nature.  I  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  make  any 
elaborate  criticism  of  psychological  hedonism,  as  that 
doctrine  is  now  sufficiently  exploded.  In  the  following 
chapters  of  this  section  I  have  attempted  to  describe  in 
general  terms  the  way  in  which  these  native  tendencies 
of  our  constitution  co-operate  to  determine  the  course  of 
the  life  of  emotion  and  action;  to  show  how,  under  the 
influence  of  the  social  environment,  they  become  grad- 
ually organised  in  systems  of  increasing  complexity, 
while  they  remain  unchanged  as  regards  their  most  es- 
sential attributes ;  to  show  that,  although  it  is  no  longer 
easy  to  trace  to  their  source  the  complex  manifestations 
of  human  character  and  will,  it  is  nevertheless  possible  to 
sketch  in  rough  outline  the  course  of  this  development  and 
to  exhibit  human  volition  of  the  highest  moral  type  as  but 
a  more  complex  conjunction  of  the  mental  forces  which 
we  may  trace  in  the  evolutionary  scale  far  back  into  the 
animal  kingdom. 

This  first  section  of  the  book  deals,  then,  with  the 


i8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

characters  of  the  individual  mind  that  are  of  prime  im- 
portance for  the  social  life  of  man.  Of  this  section  it 
might  be  said  that  it  is  not  properly  a  part  of  a  social 
psychology.  Nevertheless  it  is  an  indispensable  pre- 
liminary of  all  social  psychology,  and,  since  no  con- 
sistent and  generally  acceptable  scheme  of  this 
kind  has  hitherto  been  furnished,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  attempt  it.  It  may  even  be  contended  that 
it  deals  with  the  fundamental  problem  of  social 
psychology.  /-For  social  psychology  has  to  show  how^ 
given  the  native  propensities  and  capacities  of  the  in- 
dividual human  min^,  all  the  complex  mental  life  of  so- 
cieties  is  shaped  by  them  and  in  turn  reacts  upjon  the 
course  of  their  development  and  operation  in  the  in- 
dividual. And  of  this  task  the  primary  and  most  es- 
sential part  is  the  showing  how  the  life  of  highly  organ- 
ised societies,  involving  as  it  does  high  moral  qualities 
of  character  and  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  great  mass 
of  men,  is  at  all  possible  to  creatures  that  have  been 
evolved  from  the  animal  world,  whose  nature  bears  so 
many  of  the  marks  of  this  animal  origin,  and  whose 
principal  springs  of  activity  are  essentially  similar  to 
those  of  the  higher  animals.  For,  as  Dr.  Rashdall  well 
says,  "the  raw  material,  so  to  speak,  of  Virtue  and  Vice 
is  the  same — i.e.,  desires  which  in  themselves,  abstracted 
from  their  relation  to  the  higher  self,  are  not  either 
moral  or  immoral  but  simply  non-moral."^  That  is  to 
say,  the  fundamental  problem  of  social  psychology  is  the 
moralisation  of  the  individual  by  the  society  into  which 
he  is  born  as  a  creature  in  which  the  non-moral  and 
purely  egoistic  tendencies  are  so  much  stronger  than 
any  altruistic  tendencies.  This  moraHsation  or  socialisa-, 
*"The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  73.  Oxford,  19O/ 


INTRODUCTION  19 

tion  of  the  individual  is,  then,  the  essential  theme  of  this 
section. 

In  Section  II.  I  have  briefly  indicated  some  of  the 
ways  in  v^^hich  the  principal  instincts  and  primary  tend- 
encies of  the  human  mind  play  their  parts  in  the  lives  of 
human  societies ;  my  object  being  to  bring  home  to  the 
reader  the  truth  that  the  understanding  of  the  life  of 
society  in  any  or  all  of  its  phases  presupposes  a  icnowl- 
edge  of  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind,  a  truth 
which,  though  occasionally  acknowledged  in  principle, 
is  in  practice  so  frequently  ignored. 


SECTION  I 

THE    MENTAL    CHARACTERS     OF    MAN     OF 

PRIMARY  IMPORTANCE  FOR  HIS  LIFE  IN 

SOCIETY 

CHAPTER  II 

THE    NATURE    OF    INSTINCTS    AND    THEIR    PLACE    IN    THE 
CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  HUMAN  MIND 

THE  human  mind  has  certain  innate  or  inherited 
tendencies  which  are  the  essential  springs  or  mo- 
tive powers  of  all  thought  and  action,  whether  indi- 
vidual or  collective,  and  are  the, bases  from  which  the 
character  and  will  of  individuals  and  of  nations  are 
gradually  developed  under  the  guidance  of  the  intel- 
lectual faculties.  These  primary  innate  tendencies  have 
different  relative  strengths  in  the  native  constitutions 
of  the  individuals  of  different  races,  and  they  are 
favoured  or  checked  in  very  different  degrees  by  the 
very  different  social  circumstances  of  men  in  different 
stages  of  culture;  but  they  are  probably  common  to  the 
men  of  every  race  and  of  every  age.  If  this  view,  that 
human  nature  has  everywhere  and  at  all  times  this  com- 
mon native  foundation,  can  be  established,  it  will  afford 
a  much-needed  basis  for  speculation  on  the  history  of 
the  development  of  human  societies  and  human  in- 
stitutions. For  so  long  as  it  is  possible  to  assume,  as  has 
often  been   done,   that  these  innate  tendencies   of   the 

20 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  21 

human  mind  have  varied  greatly  from  age  to  age  and 
from  race  to  race,  all  such  speculation  is  founded  on 
quicksand  and  we  cannot  hope  to  reach  views  of  a  rea- 
sonable degree  of  certainty. 

The  evidence  that  the  native  basis  of  the  human  mind, 
constituted  by  the  sum  of  these  innate  tendencies,  has  this 
stable  unchanging  character  is  afforded  by  comparative 
psychology.  For  we  find,  not  only  that  these  tendencies, 
in  stronger  or  weaker  degree,  are  present  in  men  of  all 
races  now  living  on  the  earth,  but  that  we  may  find  all  of 
them,  or  at  least  the  germs  of  them,  in  most  of  the 
higher  animals.  Hence  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  they 
played  the  same  essential  part  in  the  minds  of  the  primi- 
tive human  stock,  or  stocks,  and  in  the  pre-human  an- 
cestors that  bridged  the  great  gap  in  the  evolutionary 
series  between  man  and  the  animal  world. 

These  all-important  and  relatively  unchanging  ten- 
dencies, which  form  the  basis  of  human  character  and 
will,  are  of  two  main  classes — 

(i )  The  specific  tendencies  or  instincts ; 

(2)  The  general  or  non-specific  tendencies  arising  out 
of  the  constitution  of  mind  and  the  nature  of  mental  proc- 
ess in  general,  when  mind  and  mental  process  attain  a 
certain  degree  of  complexity  in  the  course  of  evolution. 

In  the  present  and  seven  following  chapters  I  pro- 
pose to  define  the  more  important  of  these  specific  and 
general  tendencies,  and  to  sketch  very  briefly  the  way  in 
which  they  become  systematised  in  the  course  of  char- 
acter-formation ;  and  in  the  second  section  of  this  volume 
some  attempt  will  be  made  to  illustrate  the  special  im- 
portance of  each  one  for  the  social  life  of  man. 

Contemporary  writers  of  all  classes  make  frequent  use 
of  the  words  "instinct"  and  "instinctive,"  but,  with  very 
few  exceptions,  they  use  them  so  loosely  that  they  have 


22  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

almost  spoilj  them  for  scientific  purposes.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  adjective  "instinctive"  is  commonly  applied  to 
every  human  action  that  is  performed  without  deliberate 
reflexion ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  actions  of  animals  are 
popularly  attributed  to  instinct,  and  in  this  connexigu 
instinct  is  vaguely  conceived  as  a  mysterious  faculty,  ut- 
terly different  in  nature  from  any  human  faculty,  which 
Providence  has  given  to  the  brutes  because  the  higher 
faculty  of  reason  has  been  denied  them.  Hundreds  of 
passages  might  be  quoted  from  contemporary  authors, 
even  some  of  considerable  philosophical  culture,  to  il- 
lustrate how  these  two  words  are  used  with  a  minimum 
of  meaning,  generally  with  the  effect  of  disguising  from 
the  writer  the  obscurity  and  incoherence  of  his  thought. 
The  following  examples  will  serve  to  illustrate  at  once 
this  abuse  and  the  hopeless  laxity  with  which  even  cul- 
tured authors  habitually  make  use  of  psychological  terms. 
One  philosophical  writer  on  social  topics  tells  us  that  the 
power  of  the  State  "is  dependent  on  the  instinct  of 
subordination,  which  is  the  outcome  of  the  desire  of  the 
people,  more  or  less  distinctly  conceived,  for  certain 
social  ends" :  another  asserts  that  ancestor-worship  has 
survived  amongst  the  Western  peoples  as  a  "mere  tradi- 
tion and  instinct" :  a  medical  writer  has  recently  asserted 
that  if  a  drunkard  is  fed  on  fruit  he  will  "become  in- 
stinctively a  teetotaler" :  a  political  writer  tells  us  that 
"the  Russian  people  is  rapidly  acquiring  a  political  in- 
stinct" :  from  a  recent  treatise  on  morals  by  a  dis- 
tinguished philosopher  two  passages,  fair  samples  of  a 
large  number,  may  be  taken ;  one  describes  the  "notion 
that  blood  demands  blood"  as  an  "inveterate  instinct  of 
primitive  humanity";  the  other  affirms  that  "punish- 
ment originates  in  the  instinct  of  vengeance" :  another  of 
our  most  distinguished  philosophers  asserts  that  "popular 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  23 

instinct  maintains"  that  "there  is  a  theory  and  a  justifica- 
tion of  social  coercion  latent  in  the  term  'self-govern- 
ment.' "  As  our  last  illustration  we  may  take  the  fol- 
lowing passage  from  an  avowedly  psychological  article 
in  a  recent  number  of  the  Sped  at  or:  "The  instinct  of 
contradiction,  like  the  instinct  of  acquiescence,  is  inborn. 
.  .  .  These  instincts  are  very  deep-rooted  and  absolutely 
incorrigiljle,  either  from  within  or  from  without.  Both 
springing  as  they  do  from  a  radical  defect,  from  a  want 
of  original  independence,  they  affect  the  whole  mind  and 
character."  These  are  favourable  examples  of  current 
usage,  and  they  justify  the  statement  that  these  words 
"instinct"  and  "instinctive"  are  commonly  used  as  a 
cloak  for  ignorance  when  a  writer  attempts  to  explain 
any  individual  or  collective  action  that  he  fails,  or  has  not 
tried,  to  understand.  Yet  there  can  be  no  understanding 
of  the  development  of  individual  character  or  of  in- 
dividual and  collective  conduct  unless  the  nature  of  in^ 
stinct  and  its  scope  and  function  in  the  human  mind  are 
clearly  and  firmly  grasped. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  any  adequate  mention  of 
instincts  in  treatises  on  human  psychology  written  be- 
fore the  middle  of  last  century.  But  the  work  of  Dar- 
win and  of  Herbert  Spencer  has  lifted  to  some  extent 
the  veil  of  mystery  from  the  instincts  of  animals,  and 
has  made  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  instinct  to  hu- 
man intelligence  and  conduct  one  of  the  most  widely 
discussed  in  recent  years. 

Among  professed  psychologists  there  is  now  fair  agree- 
ment as  to  the  usage  of  the  terms  "instinct"  and  "in- 
stinctive." By  the  great  majority  they  are  used  only  to 
denote  certain  innate  specific  tendencies  of  the  mind  that 
are  common  to  all  mernbers  of  any  one  species,  racial 
characters  that  have  been  slowly  evolved  in  the  process 


24  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

I 

of  adaptation  of  species  to  their  environment  and  that 
can  be  neither  eradicated  from  the  mental  constitution  of 
which  they  are  innate  elements  nor  acquired  by  indi- 
viduals in  the  course  of  their  lifetime.  A  few  writers,  of 
whom  Professor  Wundt  is  the  most  prominent,  apply  the 
terms  to  the  very  strongly  fixed,  acquired  habits  of  ac- 
tion that  are  more  commonly  and  properly  described  as 
secondarily  automatic  actions,  as  well  as  to  the  innate 
specific  tendencies.  The  former  usage  seems  in  every 
way  preferable  and  is  adopted  in  these  pages. 

But,  even  among  those  psychologists  who  use  the 
terms  in  this  stricter  sense,  there  are  still  great  differ- 
ences of  opinion  as  to  the  place  of  instinct  in  the  human 
mind.  All  agree  that  man  has  been  evolved  from  pre- 
human ancestors  whose  lives  were  dominated  by  in- 
stincts ;  but  some  hold  that,  as  man's  intelligence  and 
reasoning  powers  developed,  his  instincts  atrophied,  until 
now  in  civilised  man  instincts  persist  only  as  troublesome 
vestiges  of  his  pre-human  state,  vestiges  that  are  com- 
parable to  the  vermiform  appendix  and  which,  like  the 
latter,  might  with  advantage  be  removed  by  the  surgeon's 
knife,  if  that  were  at  all  possible.  Others  assign  them  a 
more  prominent  place  in  the  constitution  of  the  human 
mind ;  for  they  see  that  intelligence,  as  it  increased  with 
the  evolution  of  the  higher  animals  and  of  man,  did  not 
supplant  and  so  lead  to  the  atrophy  of  the  instincts,  but 
rather  controlled  and  modified  their  operation ;  and  some, 
like  G.  H.  Schneider^  and  William  James,^  maintain  that 
man  has  at  least  as  many  instincts  as  any  of  the  animals, 
and  assign  them  a  leading  part  in  the  determination  of 
human  conduct  and  mental  process.  This  last  view  is 
now  rapidly  gaining  ground;  and  this  volume,  I  hope, 
^  "Der  tWerische  Wille,"  Leipzig,  1880. 
'"Principles  of  Psychology,"  London,  1891. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  25 

4 

may  contribute  in   some   slight  degree  to   promote   the    ^ 
recognition  of  the  full  scope  and  function  of  the  human   , 
instincts ;   for  this  recognition  will,  I   feel  sure,  appear 
to  those  who  come  after  us  as  the  most  important  advance 
made  by  psychology  in  our  time. 

Instinctive  actions  are  displayC'd  in  their  purest  form 
by  animals  not  very  high  in  the  scale  of  intelligence. 
In  the  higher  vertebrate  animals  few  instinctive  modes 
of  behaviour  remain  purely  instinctive — i.e.,  unmodi- 
fied by  intelligence  and  by  habits  acquired  under  the 
guidance  of  intelligence  or  by  imitation.  And  even  the 
human  infant,  whose  intelligence  remains  but  little  de- 
veloped for  so  many  months  after  birth,  performs  few 
purely  instinctive  actions ;  because  in  the  human  being 
the  instincts,  although  innate,  are,  with  few  exceptions, 
undeveloped  in  the  first  months  of  life,  and  only  ripen, 
or  become  capable  of  functioning,  at  various  periods 
throughout  the  years  from  infancy  to  puberty. 

Insect  life  affords  perhaps  the  most  striking  examples 
of  purely  instinctive  action.  There  are  many  instances  \ 
of  insects  that,  invariably  lay  their  eggs  in  the  only 
places  where  the  grubs,  when  hatched,  will  find  the  food 
they  need  and  can  eat,  or  where  the  larvae  will  be  able 
to  attach  themselves  as  parasites  to  some  host  in  a  way 
that  is  necessary  to  their  survival.  In  such  cases  it  is 
clear  that  the  behaviour  of  the  parent  is  determined  by 
the  impressions  made  on  its  senses  by  the  appropriate  ob- 
jects or  places :  e.g.,  the  smell  of  decaying  flesh  leads 
the  carrion-fly  to  deposit  its  eggs  upon  it ;  the  sight  or 
odour  of  some  particular  flower  leads  another  to  lay  its 
eggs  among  the  ovules  of  the  flower,  which  serve  as 
food  to  the  grubs.  Others  go  through  more  elaborate 
trains  of  action,  as  when  the  mason-wasp  lays  its  eggs  in 
a  mud-nest,  fills  up  the  space  with  caterpillars,  which  it 


26  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

paralyses  by  means  of  well-directed  stings,  and  seals  it 
up;  so  that  the  caterpillars  remain  as  a  supply  of  fresh 
animal  food  for  the  young  which  the  parent  will  never 
see  and  of  whose  needs  it  can  have  no  knowledge  or  idea. 
Among  the  lower  vertebrate  animals  also  instinctive 
actions,  hardly  at  all  modified  by  intelligent  control,  are 

h  common.  The  young  chick  runs  to  his  mother  in  response 
to  a  call  of  peculiar  quality  and  nestles  beneath  her; 
the  young  squirrel  brought  up  in  lonely  captivity,  when 
nuts  are  given  him  for  the  first  time,  opens  and  eats 
some  and  buries  others  with  all  the  movements  char- 
acteristic of  his  species ;  the  kitten  in  the  presence  of  a 
dog  or  a  mouse  assumes  the  characteristic  feline  at- 
titudes and  behaves  as  all  his  fellows  of  countless  gen- 
erations have  behaved.  Even  so  intelligent  an  animal 
as  the  domesticated  dog  behaves  on  some  occasions  in  a 
purely  instinctive  fashion ;  when,  for  example,  a  terrier 
comes  across  the  trail  of  a  rabbit,  his  hunting  instinct 

/  is  immediately  aroused  by  the  scent;  he  becomes  blind 
and  deaf  to  all  other  impressions  as  he  follows  the  trail, 
and  then,  when  he  sights  his  quarry,  breaks  out  into  the 
yapping  which  is  peculiar  to  occasions  of  this  kind.  His 
wild  ancestors  hunted  in  packs,  and,  under  those  con- 

/  ditions,  the  characteristic  bark  emitted  on  sighting  the 
quarry  served  to  bring  his  fellows  to  his  aid;  but  when 
the  domesticated  terrier  hunts  alone,  his  excited  yap- 
ping can  but  facilitate  the  escape  of  his  quarry;  yet  the 
old  social  instinct  operates  too  powerfully  to  be  con- 
trolled by  his  moderate  intelligence. 

These  few  instances  of  purely  instinctive  behaviour 
illustrate  clearly  its  nature.  In  the  typical  case  some 
sense-impression,  or  combination  of  sense-impressions, 
excites  some  perfectly  definite  behaviour,  some  move"-, 
ment  or  train  of  movement?  which  is  the  same  in  all  in-« 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  27 

dividuals  of  the  species  and  on  all  similar  occasions ;  and 
in  general  the  behaviour  so  occasioned  is  of  a  kind  either  > 
to  promote  the  welfare  of  the  individual  animal  or  of  \ 
the  community  to  which  he  belongs,  or  to  secure  the 
perpetuation  of  the  species.^ 

In  treating  of  the  instincts  of  animals,  writers  have 
usually  described  them  as  innate  tendencies  to  certain 
kinds  of  action,  and  Herbert  Spencer's  widely  accepted 
definition  of_instinctive  action  as  compound  reflex  ac- 
tion takes  account  only  of  the  behaviour  or  movements  to 
which  instincts  give  rise.  But  instincts  are  more  than 
innate  tendencies  or  dispositions  to  certain  Icinds  of 
movement  There  fs  every  reasoiTTo  beIieve"tlTat  even 
the  most  purely  instinctive  action  is  the  outcome  of  a 
distinctly  mental  process,  one  which  is  incapable  of  be- 
ing described  in  purely  mechanical  terms,  because  it  is 
a  psycho-physical  process,  involving  psychical  as  well  as 
physical  changes,  and  one  which,  like  every  other  mental 
process,  has,  and  can  only  be  fully  described  in  terms 
of,  the  three  aspects  of  all  mental  process — the  cogni- 
tive, the  affective,  and  the  cona^ve  aspects ;  that  is  to  say,  "K 
every  instance  of  instinctive  behaviour  involves  a  know- 
ing of  some  thing  or  object,  a  feeling  in  regard  to  it,  and 
a  striving  towards  or  away  from  tliat  object. 

We  cannot,  of  course,  directly  observe  the  threefold 
psychical  aspect  of  the  psycho-physical  process  that  is- 
sues in  instinctive  behaviour ;  but  we  are  amply  justified 
in  assuming  that  it  invariably  accompanies  the  process 

*  In  many  cases  an  instinct  is  excitable  only  during  the  prev- 
alence of  some  special  organic  condition  {e.g.,  the  nest-building 
and  mating  instincts  of  birds,  the  sitting  instinct  of  the  broody 
hen)  ;  and  some  writers  have  given  such  organic  conditions  an 
undue  prominence,  while  neglecting  the  essential  part  played  by 
sense-impressions. 


28  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

in  the  nervous  system  of  which  the  instinctive  move- 
ments are  the  immediate  results,  a  process  which,  being 
initiated  on  stimulation  of  some  sense  organ  by  the 
physical  impressions  received  from  the  object,  travels  up 
the  sensory  nerves,  traverses  the  brain,  and  descends  as 
an  orderly  or  co-ordinated  stream  of  nervous  impulses 
along  efferent  nerves  to  the  appropriate  groups  of 
muscles  and  other  executive  organs.  We  are  justified  in 
assuming  the  cognitive  aspect  of  the  psychical  process, 
because  the  nervous  excitation  seems  to  traverse  those 
parts  of  the  brain  whose  excitement  involves  the  produc- 
tion of  sensations  or  changes  in  the  sensory  content  of 
consciousness;  we  are  justified  in  assuming  the  affective 
aspect  of  the  psychical  process,  because  the  creature  ex- 
hibits unmistakable  symptoms  of  feeling  and  emotional 
excitement;  and,  especially,  we  are  justified  in  assuming 
the  conative  aspect  of  the  psychical  process,  because  all 
instinctive  behaviour  exhibits  that  unique  mark  of  mental 
process,  a  persistent  striving  towards  the  natural  end  of 
the  process.  That  is  to  say,  the  process,  unlike  any 
merely  mechanical  process,  is  not  to  be  arrested  by  any 
sufficient  mechanical  obstacle,  but  is  rather  intensified 
by  any  such  obstacle  and  only  comes  to  an  end  either 
when  its  appropriate  goal  is  achieved,  or  when  some* 
stronger  incompatible  tendency  is  excited,  or  when  the 
creature   is   exhausted   by   its   persistent   efforts. 

Now,  the  psycho-physical  process  that  issues  in  an  in- 
stinctive action  is  initiated  by  a  sense-impression  which, 
usually,  is  but  one  of  many  sense-impressions  received 
at  the  same  time;  and  the  fact  that  this  one  impression 
plays  an  altogether  dominant  part  in  determining  the 
animal's  behaviour  shows  that  its  effects  are  peculiarly 
favoured,  that  the  nervous  system  is  peculiarly  fitted  to 
receive  and  to  respond  to  just  that  kind  of  impression. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  29 

The  impression  must  be  supposed  to  excite,  not  merely 
detailed  changes  in  the  animal's  field  of  sensation,  but  a 
sensation  or  complex  of  sensations  that  has  significance 
or  meaning  for  the  animal;  hence  we  must  regard  the 
instinctive  process  in  its  cognitive  aspect  as  distinctly  of 
the  nature  of  perception,  however  rudimentary.  In  the 
animals  most  nearly  allied  to  ourselves  we  can,  in  many 
instances  of  instinctive  behaviour,  clearly  recognise  the 
symptoms  of  some  particular  kind  of  emotion  such  as 
fear,  anger,  or  tender  feeling;  and  the  same  symptoms 
always  accompany  any  one  kind  of  instinctive  behaviour, 
as  when  the  cat  assumes  the  defensive  attitude,  the  dog 
resents  the  intrusion  of  a  strange  dog,  or  the  hen  tenderly 
gathers  her  brood  beneath  her  wings.  We  seem  justi- 
fied in  believing  that  each  kind  of  instinctive  behaviour 
is  always  attended  by  some  such  emotional  excitement, 
however  faint,  which  in  each  case  is  specific  or  peculiar 
to  that  kind  of  behaviour.  Analogy  with  our  own  ex- 
perience justifies  us,  also,  in  assuming  that  the  persistent 
striving  towards  its  end,  which  characterises  mental 
process  and  distinguishes  instinctive  behaviour  most 
clearly  from  mere  reflex  action,  implies  some  such  mode 
of  experience  as  we  call  conative,  the  kind  of  experi- 
ence which  in  its  more  developed  forms  is  properly  called 
desire  or  aversion,  but  which,  in  the  blind  form  in  which 
we  sometimes  have  it  and  which  is  its  usual  form  among 
the  animals,  is  a  mere  impulse,  or  craving,  or  uneasy 
sense  of  want.  Further,  we  seem  justified  in  believing 
that  the  continued  obstruction  of  instinctive  striving  is 
always  accompanied  by  painful  feeling,  its  successful 
progress  towards  its  end  by  pleasurable  feeling,  and  the 
achievement  of  its  end  by  a  pleasurable  sense  of  satis- 
faction. 
An  instinctive  action,  then,  must  not  be  regarded  as 


30  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

simple  or  compound  reflex  action  if  by  reflex  action  we 
mean,  as  is  usually  meant,  a  movement  caused  by  a  sense- 
stimulus  and  resulting  from  a  sequence  of  merely 
physical  processes  in  some  nervous  arc.  Nevertheless, 
just  as  a  reflex  action  implies  the  presence  in  the  nervous 
system  of  the  reflex  nervous  arc,  so  the  instinctive  action 
also  implies  some  enduring  nervous  basis  whose  organisa- 
tion is  inherited,  an  innate  or  inherited  psycho-physical 
disposition,  which,  anatomically  regarded,  probably  has 
the  form  of  a  compound  system  of  sensori-motor  arcs. 

We  may,  then,  define  an  instinct  as  an  inherited  or  in- 
nate psycho-physical  disposition  which  determines  its 
'  possessor  to  perceive,  and  to  pay  attention  to,  objects  of 
a  certain  class,  to  experience  an  emotional  excitement  of 
a  particular  quality  upon  perceiving  such  an  object,  and 
to  act  in  regard  to  it  in  a  particular  manner,  or,  at  least, 
to  experience  an  impulse  to  such  action. 

It  must  further  be  noted  that  some  instincts  remain 
I  inexcitable  except  during  the  prevalence  of  some  tempo- 
rary bodily  state,  such  as  hunger.  In  these  cases  we 
must  suppose  that  the  bodily  process  or  state  deter- 
mines the  stimulation  of  sense-organs  within  the  body, 
and  that  nervous  currents  ascending  from  these  to  the 
psycho-physical  disposition  maintain  it  in  an  excitable 
condition.^ 

*  Most  definitions  of  instincts  and  instinctive  actions  take  ac- 
count only  of  their  conative  aspect,  of  the  motor  tendencies  by 
which  the  instincts  of  animals  arc  most  clearly  manifested  to 
us ;  and  it  is  a  common  mistake  to  ignore  the  cognitive  and  the 
aflFective  aspects  of  the  instinctive  mental  process.  Some  authors 
make  the  worse  mistake  of  assuming  that  instinctive  actions 
are  performed  unconsciously.  Herbert  Spencer's  definition  of 
instinctive  action  as  compound  reflex  action  was  mentioned 
above.  Addison  wrote  of  instinct  that  it  is  "an  immediate  im- 
pression from  the  first  Mover  and  the  Divine  Energy  acting  in 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  31 

The  behaviour  of  some  of  the  lower  animals  seems  to 
be  almost  completely  determined  throughout  their  lives 
by  instincts  modified  but  very  little  by  experience ;  they 
perceive,  feel,  and  act  in  a  perfectly  definite  and  in- 
variable manner  whenever  a  given  instinct  is  excited — 
i.e.,  whenever  the  presence  of  the  appropriate  object  coin- 

the  creatures."  Fifty  years  ago  the  entomologists,  Kirby  and 
Spence,  wrote:  ''We  may  call  the  instincts  of  animals  those 
faculties  implanted  in  them  by  the  Creator,  by  which,  independ- 
ent of  instruction,  observation,  or  experience,  they  are  all  alike 
impelled  to  the  performance  of  certain  acu'ons  tending  to  the 
wellbeing  of  the  individual  and  the  preservation  of  the  species." 
More  recently  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Peckham,  who  have  observed  the 
behaviour  of  wasps  so  carefully,  have  written  :  "Under  the  term 
'instinct'  we  place  all  complex  acts  which  are  performed  previ- 
ous to  experience,  and  in  a  similar  manner  by  all  members  of  the 
same  sex  and  race."  One  modern  authority,  Professor  Karl 
Groos,  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  "the  idea  of  consciousness 
must  be  rigidly  excluded  from  any  definition  of  instinct  which  is 
to  be  of  practical  utility."  In  view  of  this  persistent  tendency 
to  ignore  the  inner  or  psychical  side  of  instinctive  processes,  it 
seems  to  me  important  to  insist  upon  it,  and  especially  to  reg- 
ognise  in  our  definition  its  cognitive  and  affective  aspects  as  well 
as  its  conative  aspect.  I  would  reverse  Professor  Groos's  dic- 
tum and  would  say  that  any  definition  of  instinctive  action  that 
does  not  insist  upon  its  psychical  aspect  is  useless  for  practical 
purposes,  and  worse  than  useless  because  misleading.  For,  if  we 
neglect  the  psychical  aspect  of  instinctive  processes,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  understand  the  part  played  by  instincts  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  mind  and  in  the  determination  of  the  con- 
duct of  individuals  and  societies;  and  it  is  the  fundamental  and 
all-pervading  character  of  their  influence  upon  the  social  life 
of  mankind  which  alone  gives  the  consideration  of  instincts  its 
great   practical    importance. 

The  definition  of  instinct  proposed  above  does  not  insist,  as  do 

many   definitions,   that  the  instinctive  action   is   one  performed 

without  previous  experience  of  the  object;  for  it  is  only  when  an 

instinct  is  exercised  for  the  first  time  by  any  creature  that  the 

action  is  prior  to  experience,  and  instinctive  actions  may  con- 


32  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

cides  with  the  appropriate  organic  state  of  the  creature. 
The  highest  degree  of  complexity  of  mental  process  at- 
tained by  such  creatures  is  a  struggle  between  two  op- 
posed instinctive  tendencies  simultaneously  excited. 
Such  behaviour  is  relatively  easy  to  understand  in  the 
light  of  the  conception  of  instincts  as  innate  psycho- 
physical dispositions. 

While  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  behaviour  of  any 
animal  is  wholly  determined  by  instincts  quite  unmodi- 
fied by  experience,  it  is  clear  that  all  the  higher  animals 
learn  in  various  and  often  considerable  degrees  to  adapt 
their  instinctive  actions  to  peculiar  circumstances ;  and  in 
the  long  course  of  the  development  of  each  human  mind, 
immensely  greater  complications  of  the  instinctive  proc- 
esses are  brought  about,  complications  so  great  that  they 
have  obscured  until  recent  years  the  essential  likeness 
of  the  instinctive  processes  in  men  and  animals.  These 
rjTrnjTiicatinns  of  inst^''"'^^"''vp'  prnces^s  are  of  four  prin- 
cipal kinds,  which  we  may  distinguish  as  follows: — 

tinue  to  be  instinctive  even  after  much  experience  of  their  ob- 
jects. The  nest-building  or  the  migratory  flight  of  birds  does 
not  cease  to  be  instinctive  when  these  actions  are  repeated  year 
after  year,  even  though  the  later  performances  shov^r  improve- 
ment through  experience,  as  the  instinctive  actions  of  the  higher 
animals  commonly  do.  Nor  does  our  definition  insist,  as  some 
do,  that  the  instinctive  action  is  performed  without  awareness  of 
the  end  towards  which  it  tends,  for  this  too  is  not  essential ; 
it  may  be,  and  in  the  case  of  the  lower  animals,  no  doubt, 
often  is,  so  performed,  as  also  by  the  very  young  child ;  but  in 
the  case  of  the  higher  animals  some  prevision  of  the  immediate 
end,  however  vague,  probably  accompanies  an  instinctive  action 
that  has  often  been  repeated;  e.g.,  in  the  case  of  the  dog  that 
has  followed  the  trail  of  game  many  times,  we  may  properly 
regard  the  action  as  instinctive,  although  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that,  after  many  kills,  the  creature  has  some  anticipation  of  the 
end  of  his  activity. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  33 

( I )  The  instinctive  reagtlons-berpnuL^capable  o£_beijTg 
initiated,  n^t  only  by  the  perception  of.  ohj^ects  of  the 
kind  which  directly  excite  the  innate  disposition,  the 
natural  or  native  excitants  of  the  instinct,  but  also  by 
ideasjof  such  objects,  and  by  perceptions  and  by  ideas  of 
objects  of  other  kinds : 

(^)thp_hnHi]y  mnvpments  in  whirJx- thp  instinct  finds 
_e2cpression  may_he-Jiiodified  and  -complicate^-to-air-in- 
definitely  great  degree : 

(3)  owing  to  the  complexity  of  the  ideas  which  can 
bring  the  human  instincts  into  play,  it  frequently  hap- 
pens that_  several  instincts  are  simultaneously  excitecU 
when  the  several  processes  blend  with  various  degrees 
of  intimacy: 

(4)  the_ jnsjinctive  tendencies  become  more  or  less 
systematically  organised -about  certain  objects-  or  ideas. 

ThFTuTTconsideration  of  the  first  two  modes  of  com- 
plication of  instinctive  behaviour  would  lead  us  too  far 
into  the  psychology  of  the  intellectual  processes,  to  which 
most  of  the  textbooks  of  psychology  are  mainly  devoted. 
It  must  suffice  merely  to  indicate  in  the  present  chapter 
a  few  points  of  prime  importance  in  this  connection.  The 
third  and  fourth  complications  will  be  dealt  with  at 
greater  length  in  the  following  chapters,  for  they  stand 
in  much  need  of  elucidation. 

In  order  to  understand  these  complications  of  instinc- 
tive behaviour  we  must  submit  the  conception  of  an  in- 
stinct to  a  more  minute  analysis.    It  was  said  above  that 
eyer^  instinctivje-  process--has..  4he-  thre«-  -aspec-ts— o#— all  r^ 
mental _pxoce^5^  the    cognitive,    the^ffective,    and  JJie.£:> 
conative.     Now,  tKe  innate  psycho-physical  disposition,  ' 
v/hich  is  an  instinct,  may  be  regarded  as  consisting  of  \ 
three  corresponding  parts,  an  afferent,  a  central^  and  a 
motor  or  efferent  part,  whose  activities  are  the  cognitive,    [ 


34  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  affective,  and  the  conative  features  respectively  of 
the  total  instinctive  process.  The  afferent  or  receptive 
part  of  the  total  disposition  is  some  organised  group 
of  nervous  elements  or  neurones  that  is  specially  adapted 
to  receive  and  to  elaborate  the  impulses  initiated  in  the 
sense-organ  by  the  native  object  of  the  instinct;  its  con- 
stitution and  activities  determine  the  sensory  content  of 
the  psycho-physical  process.  From  the  afferent  part 
the  excitement  spreads  over  to  the  central  part  of  the  dis- 
position; the  constitution  of  this  part  determines  in  the 
main  the  distribution  of  the  nervous  impulses,  especially 
of  the  impulses  that  descend  to  modify  the  working  of 
the  visceral  organs,  the  heart,  lungs,  blood-vessels,  glands, 
and  so  forth,  in  the  manner  required  for  the  most  ef- 
fective execution  of  the  instinctive  action;  the  nervous 
activities  of  this  central  part  are  the  correlates  of  the 
affective  or  emotional  aspect  or  feature  of  the  total 
psychical  process.^  The  excitement  of  the  efferent  or 
motor  part  reaches  it  by  way  of  the  central  part;  its 
constitution  determines  the  distribution  of  impulses  to 
the  muscles  of  the  skeletal  system  by  which  the  instinc- 
tive action  is  effected,  and  its  nervous  activities  are  the 
correlates  of  the  conative  element  of  the  psychical  pro(f- 
ess,  of  the  felt  impulse  to  action. 

Now,  the  afferent  or  receptive  part  and  the  efferent 
or  motor  part  are  capable  of  being  greatly  modified,  in- 
dependently of  one  another  and  of  the  central  part,  in  the 
course  of  the  lift  history  of  the  individual;  while  the 
central  part  persists  throughout  life  as  the  essential  un- 

*  It  is  probable  that  these  central  affective  parts  of  the  instinc- 
tive dispositions  have  their  seat  in  the  basal  ganglia  of  the  brain. 
The  evidence  in  favour  of  this  view  has  been  greatly  strength- 
ened by  the  recent  work  of  Pagano  ("Archives  Italiennes  dc 
Biologic,"   1906). 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  35 

changing  nucleus  of  the  dispostion.  Hence  in  man,  whose 
intelligence  and  adaptability  are  so  great,  the  afferent 
and  efferent  parts  of  each  instinctive  disposition  are 
liable  to  many  modifications,  while  the  central  part  alone 
remains  unmodified :  that  is  to  say,  the  cognitive  proc- 
esses through  which  any  instinctive  process  may  be  in- 
itiated exhibit  a  great  complication  and  variety ;  and  the 
actual  bodily  movements  by  which  the  instinctive  process 
achieves  its  end  may  be  complicated  to  an  indefinitely 
great  extent;  while  the  emotional  excitement,  with  the 
accompanying  nervous  activities  of  the  central  part  of 
the  disposition,  is  the  only  part  of  the  total  instinctive 
process  that  retains  its  specific  character  and  remains 
common  to  all  individuals  and  all  situations  in  which  the 
instinct  is  excited.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  authors  have 
commonly  treated  of  the  instinctive  actions  of  animals  on 
the  one  hand,  and  of  the  emotions  of  men  on  the  other 
hand,  as  distinct  types  of  mental  process,  failing  to  see 
that  each  kind  of  emotional  excitement  is  always  an  in- 
dication of,  and  the  most  constant  feature  of,  some  in- 
stinctive process. 

Let  us  now  consider  very  briefly  the  principal  ways 
in  which  the  instinctive  disposition  may  be  modified  on 
its  afferent  or  receptive  side;  and  let  us  take,  for  the 
sake  of  clearness  of  exposition,  the  case  of  a  particular 
instinct,  namely  the  instinct  of  fear  or  flight,  which  is 
one  of  the  strongest  and  most  widely  distributed  in- 
stincts throughout  the  animal  kingdom.  In  man  and  in 
most  animals  this  instinct  is  capable  of  being  excited  by 
any  sudden  loud  noise,  independently  of  all  experience  of 
danger  or  harm  associated  with  such  noises.  We  must 
suppose,  then,  that  the  afferent  inlet,  or  one  of  the  af- 
ferent inlets,  of  this  innate  disposition  consists  in  a 
system  of  auditory  neurones  connected  by  sensory  nerves 


36  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

with  the  ear.  This  afferent  inlet  to  this  innate  dispo- 
sition is  but  little  specialised,  since  it  may  be  excited  by 
any  loud  noise.  One  change  it  may  undergo  through  ex- 
perience is  specialisation ;  on  repeated  experience  of 
noises  of  certain  kinds  that  are  never  accompanied  or 
followed  by  hurtful  effects,  most  creatures  will  learn  to 
neglect  them^ ;  their  instinct  of  flight  is  no  longer  excited 
by  them ;  they  learn,  that  is  to  say,  to  discriminate  be- 
tween these  and  other  noises ;  this  implies  that  the  per- 
ceptual disposition,  the  afferent  inlet  of  the  instinct,  has 
become  further  specialised. 

More  important  is  the  other  principal  mode  in  which 
the  instinct  may  be  modified  on  its  afferent  or  cognitive 
side.  Consider  the  case  of  the  birds  on  an  uninhabited 
island,  which  show  no  fear  of  men  on  their  first  appear- 
ance on  the  island.  The  absence  of  fear  at  the  sight  of 
man  implies,  not  that  the  birds  have  no  instinct  of  fear, 
but  that  the  instinct  has  no  afferent  inlet  specialised  for 
the  reception  of  the  retinal  impression  made  by  the 
human  form.  But  the  men  employ  themselves  in 
shooting,  and  very  soon  the  sight  of  a  man  excites  the 
instinct  of  fear  in  the  birds,  and  they  take  to  flight  at 
his  approach.  How  are  we  to  interpret  this  change  of 
instinctive  behaviour  brought  about  by  experience? 
Shall  we  say  that  the  birds  observe  on  one  occasion, 
or  on  several  or  many  occasions,  that  on  the  approach 
of  a  man  one  of  their  number  falls  to  the  ground,  utter- 
ing cries  of  pain ;  that  they  infer  that  the  man  has 
wounded  it,  and  that  he  may  wound  and  hurt  them,  and 
that  he  is  therefore  to  be  avoided  in  the  future?  No 
psychologist   would    now    accept    this    anthropomorphic 

*As  in  the  case  of  wild  creatures  that  we  may  see  from  the 
windows  of  a  railway  train  browsing  undisturbed  by  the  familiar 
noise. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  Z7 

interpretation  of  the  facts.  If  the  behaviour  we  are 
considering  were  that  of  savage  men,  or  even  of  a  com- 
munity of  philosophers  and  logicians,  such  an  account 
would  err  in  ascribing  the  change  of  behaviour  to  a 
purely  intellectual  process.  Shall  we,  then,  say  that  the 
sudden  loud  sound  of  the  gun  excites  the  instinct  of 
fear,  and  that*  because  the  perception  of  this  sound  is 
constantly  accompanied  by  the  visual  perception  of 
the  human  form,  the  idea  of  the  latter  becomes  associ- 
ated with  the  idea  of  the  sound,  so  that  thereafter  the 
sight  of  a  man  reproduces  the  idea  of  the  sound  of  the 
gun,  and  hence  leads  to  the  excitement  of  the  instinct 
by  way  of  its  innately  organised  afferent  inlet,  the 
system  of  auditory  neurones?  This  would  be  much 
nearer  the  truth  than  the  former  account ;  some  such 
interpretation  of  facts  of  this  order  has  been  offered  by 
many  psychologists  and  very  generally  accepted.^  Its 
acceptance  involves  the  attribution  of  free  ideas,  of  the 
power  of  representation  of  objects  independently  of 
sense-presentation,  to  whatever  animals  display  this  kind 
of  modification  of  instinctive  behaviour  by  experience — 
that  is  to  say,  to  all  the  animals  save  the  lowest ; 
and  there  are  good  reasons  for  believing  that  only  man 
and  the  higher  animals  have  this  power.  We  are 
therefore  driven  to  look  for  a  still  simpler  interpretation 
of  the  facts,  and  such  a  one  is  not  far  to  seek.  We  may 
suppose  that,  since  the  visual  presentation  o,f  the  human 
form  repeatedly  accompanies  the  excitement  of  the  in- 
stinct of  fear  by  the  sound  of  the  gun,  it  acquires  the 
power  of  exciting  directly  the  reactions  characteristic 
of  this  instinct,  rather  than  indirectly  by  way  of   the 

*  It  is,  e.g.,  the  interpretation  proposed  by  G.  H.  Schneider 
in  his  work  "Der  thierische  Wille" ;  it  mars  this  otherwise  ex- 
cellent book. 

47844 


38  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

reproduction  of  the  idea  of  the  sound;  i.e.,  we  may  sup- 
pose that,  after  repetition  of  the  experience,  the  sight 
of  a  man  directly  excites  the  instinctive  process  in  its 
affective  and  conative  aspects  only ;  or  we  may  say,  in 
physiological  terms,  that  the  visual  disposition  con- 
cerned in  the  elaboration  of  the  retinal  impression  of 
the  human  form  becomes  directly  connected  or  asso- 
ciated with  the  central  and  efferent  parts  of  the  instinc- 
tive disposition,  which  thus  acquires,  through  the  repe- 
tition of  this  experience,  a  new  afferent  inlet  through 
which  it  may  henceforth  be  excited  independently  of  its 
innate  afferent  inlet. 

There  is,  I  think,  good  reason  to  believe  that  this  third 
interpretation  is  much  nearer  the  truth  than  the  other  two 
considered  above.  In  the  first  place,  the  assumption  of 
such  relative  independence  of  the  afferent  part  of  an 
instinctive  disposition  as  is  implied  by  this  interpre- 
tation is  justified  by  the  fact  that  many  instincts  may 
be  excited  by  very  different  objects  affecting  different 
senses,  prior  to  all  experience  of  such  objects.  The 
instinct  of  fear  is  the  most  notable  in  this  respect,  for  in 
many  animals  it  may  be  excited  by  certain  special  im- 
pressions of  sight,  of  smell,  and  of  hearing,  as  well  as 
by  all  loud  noises  (perhaps  also  by  any  painful  sense- 
impression),  all  of  which  impressions  evoke  the  emo- 
tional expressions  and  the  bodily  movements  charac- 
teristic of  the  instinct.  Hence,  we  may  infer  that  such 
an  instinct  has  several  innately  organised  afferent  inlets, 
through  each  of  which  its  central  and  efferent  parts 
may  be  excited  without  its  other  afferent  inlets  being 
involved  in  the  excitement. 

But  the  best  evidence  in  favour  of  the  third  inter- 
pretation is  that  which  we  may  obtain  by  introspective 
observation    of    our    own    emotional    states.      Through 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  39 

injuries  received  we  may  learn  to  fear,  or  to  be  angered 
by,  the  presence  of  a  person  or  animal  or  thing  towards 
which  we  were  at  first  indifferent ;  and  we  may  then 
experience  the  emotional  excitement  and  the  impulse 
to  the  appropriate  movements  of  flight  or  aggression, 
without  recalling  the  nature  and  occasion  of  the  injuries 
we  have  formerly  suffered ;  i.e„  although  the  idea  of 
the  former  injury  may  be  reproduced  by  the  perception, 
or  by  the  idea,  of  the  person,  animal,  or  thing  from 
which  it  was  received,  yet  the  reproduction  of  this  idea 
is  not  an  essential  step  in  the  process  of  re-excitement  of 
the  instinctive  reaction  in  its  affective  and  conative  as- 
pects ;  for  the  visual  impression  made  by  the  person  or 
thing  leads  directly  to  the  excitement  of  the  central  and 
efferent  parts  of  the  innate  disposition.  In  this  way  our 
emotional  and  conative  tendencies  become  directly  asso- 
ciated by  experience  with  many  objects  to  which  we  are 
natively  indifferent;  and  not  only  do  we  not  necessarily 
recall  the  experience  through  which  the  association  was 
set  up,  but  in  many  such  cases  we  cannot  do  so  by  any 
effort  of  recollection.^ 

Such  acquisition  of  new  perceptual  inlets  by  instinctive 
dispositions,  in  accordance  with  the  principle  of  associa- 
tion in  virtue  of  temporal  contiguity,  seems  to  occur 
abundantly  among  all  the  higher  animals  and  to  be  the 
principal  mode  in  which  they  profit  by  experience  and 
learn  to  adapt  their  behaviour  to  a  greater  variety  of 
the  objects  of  their  environment  than  is  provided  for  by 

'  In  this  way  some  particular  odour,  some  melody  or  sound, 
some  phrase  or  trick  of  speech  or  manner,  some  peculiar  com- 
bination of  colour  or  effect  of  light  upon  the  landscape,  may 
become  capable  of  directly  exciting  some  affective  disposition, 
and  we  find  ourselves  suddenly  swept  by  a  wave  of  strong 
emotion  for  which  we  can  assign  no  adequate  cause. 


40  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

their  purely  innate  dispositions.  In  man  it  occurs  still 
more  abundantly,  and  in  his  case  the  further  complication 
ensues  that  each  sense-presentation  that  thus  becomes 
capable  of  arousing  some  emotional  and  conative  dispo- 
sition may  be  represented,  or  reproduced  in  idea;  and, 
since  the  representation,  having  in  the  main  the  same 
neural  basis  as  the  sense-presentation,  induces  equally 
well  the  same  emotional  and  conative  excitement,  and 
since  it  may  be  brought  to  mind  by  any  one  of  the  intel- 
lectual processes,  ranging  from  simple  associative  repro- 
duction to  the  most  subtle  processes  of  judgment  and  in- 
ference, the  ways  in  which  any  one  instinctive  disposi- 
tion of  a  developed  human  mind  may  be  excited  are  in- 
definitely various. 

There  is  a  second  principal  mode  in  which  objects 
other  than  the  native  objects  of  an  instinct  may  lead 
to  the  excitement  of  its  central  and  efferent  parts.  This 
is  similar  to  the  mode  of  reproduction  of  ideas  known 
as  the  reproduction  by  similars^  a  thing,  or  sense-im- 
pression, more  or  less  like  the  specific  excitant  of  an 
instinct,  but  really  of  a  different  class,  excites  the  in- 
stinct in  virtue  of  those  features  in  which  it  resembles 
the  specific  object.  As  a  very  simple  instance  of  this, 
we  may  take  the  case  of  a  horse  shying  at  an  old  coat 
left  lying  by  the  roadside.  The  shying  is,  no  doubt,  due 
to  the  excitement  of  an  instinct  whose  function  is  to 
secure  a  quick  retreat  from  any  crouching  beast  of  prey, 
and  the  coat  sufficiently  resembles  such  a  crouching 
form  to  excite  the  instinct.  This  example  illustrates 
the  operation  of  this  principle  in  the  crudest  fashion. 
In  the  human  mind  it  works  in  a  much  more  subtle  and 
wide-reaching  fashion.  Very  delicate  resemblances  of 
form  and  relation  between  two  objects  may  suffice  to 
render  one   of   them  capable   of   exciting  the   emotion 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  41 

and  the  impulse  which  are  the  appropriate  instinctive 
response  to  the  presentation  of  the  other  object ;  and, 
in  order  that  this  shall  occur,  it  is  not  necessary  that  the 
individual  shall  become  explicitly  aware  of  the  resem- 
blance between  the  two  objects,  nor  even  that  the  idea 
of  the  second  object  shall  be  brought  to  his  conscious- 
ness; though  this,  no  doubt,  occurs  in  many  cases.  The 
wide  scope  of  this  principle  in  the  human  mind  is  due, 
not  merely  to  the  subtler  operation  of  resemblances,  but 
also  to  the  fact  that  through  the  working  of  the  principle 
of  temporal  contiguity,  discussed  on  the  foregoing  page, 
the  number  of  objects  capable  of  directly  exciting  any 
instinct  becomes  very  considerable,  and  each  such  object 
then  serves  as  a  basis  for  the  operation  of  the  principle 
of  resemblance ;  that  is  to  say,  each  object  that  in  virtue 
of  temporal  contiguity  acquires  the  power  of  exciting  the 
central  and  efferent  parts  of  an  instinct  renders  possible 
the  production  of  the  same  effect  by  a  number  of  objects 
more  or  less  resembling  it.  The  conjoint  operation  of 
the  two  principles  may  be  illustrated  by  a  simpk  ex- 
ample :  a  child  is  terrified  upon  one  occasion  by  the  vio- 
lent behaviour  of  a  man  of  a  pecuHar  cast  of  countenance 
or  of  some  special  fashion  of  dress ;  thereafter  not  only 
does  the  perception  or  idea  of  this  man  excite  fear,  but 
any  man  resembling  him  in  face  or  costume  may  do  so 
without  the  idea  of  the  original  occasion  of  fear,  or  of 
the  terrifying  individual,  recurring  to  consciousness. 

As  regards  the  modification  of  the  bodily  movements 
by  means  of  which  an  instinctive  mental  process 
achieves,^  or  strives  to  achieve,  its  end,  man  excels  the 
animals  even  to  a  greater  degree  than  as  regards  the 
modification  of  the  cognitive  part  of  the  process.     For 

^  It  would,  of  course,  be  more  correct  to  say  that  the  creature 
strives  to  achieve  its  end  under  the  driving  power  of  the  in- 


42  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  animals  acquire  and  use  hardly  any  movement-com- 
plexes that  are  not  natively  given  in  their  instinctive  dis- 
positions and  in  the  reflex  co-ordinations  of  their  spinal 
cords.  This  is  true  of  even  so  intelligent  an  animal  as 
the  domestic  dog.  Many  of  the  higher  animals  may  by 
long  training  be  taught  to  acquire  a  few  movement-com- 
plexes— a  dog  to  walk  on  its  hind  legs,  or  a  cat  to  sit  up ; 
but  the  wonder  with  which  we  gaze  at  a  circus-horse 
standing  on  a  tub,  or  at  a  dog  dancing  on  hind  legs,  shows 
how  strictly  limited  to  the  natively  given  combinations 
of  movements  all  the  animals  normally  are. 

In  the  human  being,  on  the  other  hand,  a  few  only  of 
the  simpler  instincts  that  ripen  soon  after  birth  are  dis- 
played in  movements  determined  purely  by  the  innate  dis- 
positions ;  such  are  the  instincts  of  sucking,  of  wailing, 
of  crawling,  of  winking  and  shrinking  before  a  coming 
blow.  Most  of  the  human  instincts  ripen  at  relatively 
late  periods  in  the  course  of  individual  development, 
when  considerable  power  of  intelligent  control  and  imi- 
tation of  movement  has  been  acquired ;  hence  the  motor 
tendencies  of  these  instincts  are  seldom  manifested  in 
their  purely  native  forms,  but  are  from  the  first  modified, 
controlled,  and  suppressed  in  various  degrees.  This  is 
the  case  more  especially  with  the  large  movements  of 
trunk  and  limbs;  while  the  subsidiary  movements,  those 
which  Darwin  called  serviceable  associated  movements, 
such  as  those  due  to  contractions  of  the  facial  muscles, 
are  less  habitually  controlled,  save  by  men  of  certain 
races  and  countries  among  whom  control  of  facial  move- 
ment is  prescribed  by  custom.  An  illustration  may  indi- 
stinctive impulse  awakened  within  it,  but,  if  this  is  recognised, 
it  is  permissible  to  avoid  the  repeated  use  of  this  cumbrous 
phraseologj'. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  43 

catc  the  main  principle  involved:  One  may  have  learnt 
to  suppress  more  or  less  completely  the  bodily  move- 
ments in  which  the  excitement  of  the  instinct  of  pug- 
nacity naturally  finds  vent;  or  by  a  study  of  pugilism 
one  may  have  learnt  to  render  these  movements  more 
finely  adapted  to  secure  the  end  of  the  instinct;  or  one 
may  have  learnt  to  replace  them  by  the  habitual  use  of 
weapons,  so  that  the  hand  flies  to  the  sword-hilt  or  to 
the  hip-pocket,  instead  of  being  raised  to  strike,  whenever 
this  instinct  is  excited.  But  one  exercises  but  little,  if 
any,  control  over  the  violent  beating  of  the  heart,  the 
flushing  of  the  face,  the  deepened  respiration,  and  the 
general  redistribution  of  blood-supply  and  nervous  ten- 
sion which  constitute  the  visceral  expression  of  the  ex- 
citement of  this  instinct  and  which  are  determined  by  the 
constitution  of  its  central  afifective  part.  Hence  in  the 
human  adult,  while  this  instinct  may  be  excited  by  ob- 
jects and  situations  that  are  not  provided  for  in  the  in- 
nate disposition,  and  may  express  itself  in  bodily  move- 
ments which  also  are  not  natively  determined,  or  may 
fail  to  find  expression  in  any  such  movements  owing  to 
strong  volitional  control,  its  unmodified  central  part  will 
produce  visceral  changes,  with  the  accompanying  emo- 
tional state  of  consciousness,  in  accordance  with  its  un- 
modified native  constitution ;  and  these  visceral  changes 
will  usually  be  accompanied  by  the  innately  determined 
facial  expression  in  however  slight  a  degree;  hence  re- 
sult the  characteristic  expressions  or  symptoms  of  the 
emotion  of  anger  which,  as  regards  their  main  features, 
are  common  to  all  men  of  all  times  and  all  races. 

All  the  principal  instincts  of  man  are  liable  to  similar 
modifications  of  their  afferent  and  motor  parts,   while  / 
their  central  parts  remain  unchanged  and  determine  the 


44  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

emotional  tone  of  consciousness  and  the  visceral  changes 
characteristic  of  the  excitement  of  the  instinct. 

It  must  be  added  that  the  conative  aspect  of  the  psy- 
chical process  always  retains  the  unique  quality  of  an 
impulse  to  activity,  even  though  the  instinctive  activity 
has  been  modified  by  habitual  control;  and  this  felt  im- 
pulse, when  it  becomes  conscious  of  its  end,  assumes  the 
character  of  an  explicit  desire  or  aversion. 

Are,  then,  these  instinctive  impulses  the  only  motive 
powers  of  the  human  mind  to  thought  and  action? 
What  of  pleasure  and  pain,  which  by  so  many  of  the 
oldfr  psychologists  were  held  to  be  the  only  motives  of 
human  activity,  the  only  objects  or  sources  of  desire  and 
aversion  ? 

In  answer  to  the  former  question,  it  must  be  said  that 
in  the  developed  human  mind  there  are  springs  of  action 
of  another  class,  namely,  acquired  habits  of  thought  and 
action.  An  acquired  mode  of  activity  becomes  by  repe- 
tition habitual,  and  the  more  frequently  it  is  repeated 
the  more  powerful  becomes  the  habit  as  a  source  of 
impulse  or  motive  power.  Few  habits  can  equal  in  this 
respect  the  principal  instincts;  and  habits  are  in  a  sense 
derived  from,  and  secondary  to,  instincts;  for,  in  the 
absence  of  instincts,  no  thought  and  no  action  could  ever 
be  achieved  or  repeated,  and  so  no  habits  of  thought  or 
action  could  be  formed.  Habits  are  formed  only  in  the 
service  of  the  instincts. 

The  answer  to  the  second  question  is  that  pleasure 
andpajn^r-e-^i©t-in_lhejBS€4  ves-apidngs^  of^  action,  but»  at 
the  most^of  undirected  movements;  they  serve  rather  to 
modify  instinctive.4n:presses,  pleasurg_tending  to  sustain 
and  prolong  anvjrnodej^fartinn,  pain  to  cutjt  short ; 
under  their  prompting  and  guidance  are  effected  those 
modifications  and  adaptations  of  the  instinctive  bodily 


THE  NATURE  OE  INSTINCTS  45 

movements  which  we  have  briefly  considered  above.^ 
We  may  say,  then,  that  directly  _or  indirectlxjhe  in- 
stincts are  the  prime  movers  of  all  human  activity ;  by  the 
conative  or  impulsive  force  of  some  instinct  (or  of  some 
habit  derived  from  an  instinct),  every  train  of  thought, 
however  cold  and  passionless  it  may  seem,  is  borne  along 
towards  its  end,  and  every  bodily  activity  is  initiated  and 
sustained.  The  instinctive  impulses  determine  the  ends 
of  all  activities  and  supply  the  driving  power  by  which 
all  mental  activities  are  sustained ;  and  all  the  complex 
intellectual  apparatus  of  the  most  highly  developed  mind 
is  but  a  means  towards  these  ends,  is  but  the  instrurnent 
by  which  these  impulses  seek  their  satisfactions,  while 
pleasure  and  pain  do  but  serve  to  guide  them  in  their 
choice  of  the  means. 

Take  away  these  instinctive  dispositions  with  their 
powerful  impulses,  and  the  organism  would  become  in- 
capable of  activity  of  any  kind ;  it  would  lie  inert  and 
motionless  like  a  wonderful  clockwork  whose  main- 
spring had  been  removed  or  a  steam-engine  whose  fires 
had  been  drawn.     These  impulses  are  the  mental  forces 

*  None  of  the  doctrines  of  the  associationist  psychology  was 
more  profoundly  misleading  and  led  to  greater  absurdities  than 
the  attempt  to  exhibit  pleasure  and  pain  as  the  source  of  all 
activities.  What  could  be  more  absurd  than  Professor  Bain's 
doctrine  that  the  joy  of  a  mother  in  her  child,  her  tender  care 
and  self-sacrificing  efforts  in  its  behalf,  are  due  to  the  pleasure 
she  derives  from  bodily  contact  with  it  in  the  maternal  embrace? 
Or  what  could  be  more  strained  and  opposed  to  hundreds  of 
familiar  facts  than  Herbert  Spencer's  doctrine  that  the  emo- 
tion of  fear  provoked  by  any  object  consists  in  faint  revivals,  in 
some  strange  cluster,  of  ideas  of  all  the  pains  suffered  in  the 
past  upon  contact  with,  or  in  the  presence  of,  that  object?  {cf. 
Bain's  "Emotions  and  the  Will,"  chap.  vi. ;  and  H.  Spencer's 
"Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  i.   part  iv.  chap.   viii.  3rd  Ed.) 


46  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

r 

that  maintain  and  shape  all  the  life  of  individuals  and 

societies,  and  in  them  we  are  confronted  with  the  central 

mystery  of  life  and  mind  and  will. 

The  following  chapters,  I  hope,  will  render  clearer, 

and  will  give   some   support  to,  the  views  briefly  and 

somewhat  dogmatically  stated  in  the  present  chapter.'- 

*  For  a  further  discussion  of  the  nature  of  instinct  the  reader 
may  be  referred  to  The  British  Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  iii., 
which  contains  papers  contributed  to  a  symposium  on  Instinct 
and  Intelligence  by  Messrs.  C.  S.  Myers,  Lloyd  Morgan,  Wildon 
Carr,  G.  F.  Stout,  and  the  author. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   PRINCIPAL   INSTINCTS   AND   THE    PRIMARY   EMOTIONS 

OF   MAN 

BEFORE  we  can  make  any  solid  progress  in  the  un- 
derstanding of  the  complex  emotions  and  impulses 
that  are  the  forces  underlying  the  thoughts  and  actions 
of  men  and  of  societies,  we  must  be  able  to  distinguish 
and  describe  each  of  the  principal  human  instincts  and 
the  emotional  and  conative  tendencies  characteristic  of 
each  one  of  them.  This  task  will  be  attempted  in  the 
present  chapter ;  in  Chapter  V.  we  shall  seek  to  analyse 
some  of  the  principal  complex  emotions  and  impulses, 
to  display  them  as  compounded  from  the  limited  num- 
ber of  primary  or  simple  instinctive  tendencies  ;^  and  in 

''It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  emotions  are  fluid  and 
indefinable,  that  they  are  in  perpetual  flux  and  are  experienced 
in  an  infinite  number  of  subtle  varieties.  This  truth  may  be 
used  as  an  argument  against  the  propriety  of  attempting  to  ex- 
hibit all  the  many  varieties  of  our  emotional  experience  as 
reducible  by  analysis  to  a  small  number  of  distinct  primary  emo- 
tions. But  such  an  objection  would  be  ill-taken.  We  may  see 
an  instructive  parallel  in  the  case  of  our  colour-sensations.  The 
colour-sensations  present,  like  the  emotions,  an  indefinitely  great 
variety  of  qualities  shading  into  one  another  by  imperceptible 
gradations ;  but  this  fact  does  not  prevent  us  regarding  all  these 
many  delicate  varieties  as  reducible  by  analysis  to  a  few  simple 
primary  qualities  from  which  they  are  formed  by  fusion,  or 
blending,  in  all  proportions.  Rather  it  is  the  indefinitely  great 
variety  of  colour  qualities,  their  subtle  gradations,  and  the  pecu- 
liar affinities  between  them,  that  justify  us  in  seeking  to  exhibit 

47 


48  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  succeeding  chapters  of  this  section  we  shall  consider 
the  way  in  which  these  tendencies  become  organised 
within  the  complex  dispositions  that  constitute  the  senti- 
ments. 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  it  was  said  that  the  instinctive 
mental  process  that  results  from  the  excitement  of  any 
instinct  has  always  an  affective  aspect,  the  nature  of 
which  depends  upon  the  constitution  of  that  most  stable 
and  unchanging  of  the  three  parts  of  the  instinctive 
disposition,  namely  the  central  part.  In  the  case  of  the 
simpler  instincts,  this  affective  aspect  of  the  instinctive 
process  is  not  prominent;  and  though,  no  doubt,  the 
quality  of  it  is  peculiar  in  each  case,  yet  we  cannot  readily 
distinguish  these  qualities  and  we  have  no  special  names 
for  them.  But,  in  the  case  of  the  principal  powerful  in- 
stincts, the  affective  quality  of  each  instinctive  process 
and  the  sum  of  visceral  and  bodily  changes  in  which  it 
expresses  itself  are  peculiar  and  distinct;  hence  lan- 
guage provides  special  names  for  such  modes  of  affec- 
tive experience,  names  such  as  anger,  fear,  curiosity; 
and  the  generic  name  for  them  is  "emotion."  The  word 
"emotion"  is  used  of  course  in  popular  speech  loosely  and 

them  as  fusions  in  many  different  proportions  of  a  few  primary 
qualities.     And  the  same  is  true  of  the  emotions. 

Of  course,  if  the  James-Lange  theory  of  the  emotions  is  true, 
then  each  of  the  primary  emotions  is  in  principle  not  an  ele- 
mentary affection  of  consciousness  or  mode  of  experience,  but 
a  complex  of  organic  sensations  and  feeling  tone.  But  in  that 
case  the  conception  of  a  primary  emotion,  and  the  propriety  of 
regarding  each  complex  emotion  as  a  fusion  of  two  or  more 
primary  emotions,  are  not  invalidated.  For  the  primary  emo- 
tion must  be  regarded  (according  to  that  theory)  as  a  ^complex 
of  organic  sensation  and  feeling  tone  which  is  constant  and  spe- 
cific in  character,  its  nature  having  been  determined  and  fixed 
by  the  evolutionary  process  at  a  very  remote  pre-human  period. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     49 

somewhat  vaguely,  and  psychologists  are  not  yet  com- 
pletely consistent  in  their  use  of  it.  But  all  psychological 
terms  that  are  taken  from  common  speech  have  to  un- 
dergo a  certain  specialisation  and  more  rigid  definition 
before  they  are  fit  for  scientific  use;  and  in  using  the 
word  "emotion"  in  the  restricted  sense  which  is  indicated 
above,  and  which  will  be  rigidly  adhered  to  throughout 
these  pages,  I  am  but  carrying  to  its  logical  conclusion 
a  tendency  displayed  by  the  majority  of  recent  English 
writers  on  psychology. 

Each  of  the  principal  instincts  conditions,  then,  some 
one  kind  of  emotional  excitement  whose  quality  is  spe- 
cific or  peculiar  to  it;  and  the  emotional  excitement  of  ^' 
specific  quality  that  is  the  affective  aspect  of  the  opera-  ^  ^  j 
/tion  of  any  one  of  the  principal  instincts  may  be  called 
\a  primary  emotion.  This  principle,  which  was  enunciated 
m  my  little  work  on  physiological  psychology,  proves  to  be 
of  very  great  value  when  we  seek  to  analyse  the  complex 
emotions  into  their  primary  constituents.  Several  writers 
have  come  very  near  to  the  recognition  of  this  principle, 
but  few  or  none  of  them  have  stated  it  clearly  and  ex- 
plicitly, and,  what  is  more  important,  they  have  not  sys- 
tematically applied  it  in  any  thoroughgoing  manner  as 
the  guiding  principle  on  which  we  must  chiefly  rely  in 
seeking  to  define  the  primary  emotions  and  to  unravel  the 
complexities  of  our  concrete  emotional  experiences.^ 

*  "A  Primer  of  Physiological  Psychology,"  1905.  That  the 
principle  is  not  generally  recognised  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in 
Baldwin's  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology  (1901)  no 
mention  is  made  of  any  intimate  relation  between  emotion  and 
instinct;  we  are  there  told  that  no  adequate  psychological  defini- 
tion of  instinct  is  possible,  since  the  psychological  state  involved 
is  exhausted  by  the  terms  "sensation"  (and  also  "perception"), 
"instinct,"  "feeling,"  and  "impulse" ;  and  instinct  is  defined 
as   "an  inherited  reaction  of   the  sensori-motor  type,   relatively 


50  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

In  adapting  to  scientific  use  a  word  from  popular 
speech,  it  is  inevitable  that  some  violence  should  be  done 
to  common  usage;  and,  in  adopting  this  rigid  definition 
of  emotion,  we  shall  have  to  do  such  violence  in  refusing 
to  admit  joy,  sorrow,  and  surprise  (which  are  often  re- 
garded, even  by  writers  on  psychology,  as  the  very  types 
of  emotions)  to  our  list  whether  of  simple  and  primary 
or  of  complex  emotions.  Some  arguments  in  justifi- 
cation of  this  exclusion  will  be  adduced  later.  At  this 
stage  I  will  only  point  out  that  joy  and  sorrow  are  not 
emotional  states  that  can  be  experienced  independently 
of  the  true  emotions,  that  in  every  case  they  are  qualifi- 
cations of  the  emotions  they  accompany,  and  that  in 
strictness  we  ought  rather  to  speak  always  of  a  joyful  or 
sorrowful  emotion — e.g.,  a  joyful  wonder  or  gratitude,  a 
sorrowful  anger  or  pity. 

In  considering  the  claim  of  any  human  em.otion  or 
impulse  to  rank  as  a  primary  emotion  or  simple  instinc- 
tive impulse,  we  shall  find  two  principles  of  great  as- 
complex  and  markedly  adaptive  in  character,  and  common  to  a 
group  of  individuals."  Professor  James,  who  treats  of  the  in- 
stincts and  the  emotions  in  successive  chapters,  comes  very 
near  to  the  recognition  of  the  principle  laid  down  above,  without, 
however,  explicitly  stating  it.  Others  who  have  recognised — 
more  or  less  explicitly — this  relation  between  instinct  and  emo- 
tion are  Schneider  ("Der  thierische  Wille"),  Ribot  (''Psycho- 
logic des  Sentiments"),  and  Rutgers  Marshal  ("Pain,  Pleasure, 
and  Esthetics,"  and  "Instinct  and  Reason"). 

Mr.  Shand  (Chapter  xvi.,  Stout's  "Groundwork  of  Psychol- 
ogy") has  rightly  insisted  upon  the  impossibility  of  analysing  the 
complex  emotions  by  unaided  introspection,  and  has  laid  down 
the  principle  that  we  must  rely  largely  on  the  observation  of 
their  motor  tendencies.  But  he  has  not  combined  this  sound 
methodological  suggestion  with  the  recognition  of  the  above- 
mentioned  guiding  principle.  It  is  on  this  combination  that  I 
rely  in  the  present  chapter. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     51 

sistance.  First,  if  a  similar  emotion  and  impulse  are 
clearly  displayed  in  the  instinctive  activities  of  the  higher 
animals,  that  fact  will  afford  a  strong  presumption  that 
the  emotion  and  impulse  in  question  are  primary  and 
simple;  on  the  other  hand,  if  no  such  instinctive  activity 
occurs  among  the  higher  animals,  we  must  suspect  the 
affective  state  in  question  of  being  either  a  complex  com- 
posite emotion  or  no  true  emotion.  Secondly,  we  must 
inquire  in  each  case  whether  the  emotion  and  impulse  in 
question  occasionally  appear  in  human  beings  with  mor- 
bidly exaggerated  intensity,  apart  from  such  general 
hyper-excitability  as  is  displayed  in  mania.  For  it  would 
seem  that  each  instinctive  disposition,  being  a  relatively 
independent  functional  unit  in  the  constitution  of  the 
mind,  is  capable  of  morbid  hypertrophy  or  of  becoming 
abnormally  excitable,  independently  of  the  rest  of  the 
mental  dispositions  and  functions.  That  is  to  say,  we 
must  look  to  comparative  psychology  and  to  mental 
pathology  for  confirmation  of  the  primary  character  of 
those  of  our  emotions  that  appear  to  be  simple  and  un- 
analysable.^ 

The  Instinct  of  Flight  and  the  Emotion  of  Fear 

The  instinct  to  flee  from  danger  is  necessary  for  the 
survival  of  almost  all  species  of  animals,  and  in  most 
of  the  higher  animals  the  instinct  is  one  of  the  most  pow- 
erful. Upon  its  excitement  the  locomotory  apparatus  is 
impelled  to  its  utmost  exertions,  and  sometimes  the  in- 
tensity and  long  duration  of  these  exertions  is  more 

^That  the  emotion  as  a  fact  of  consciousness  may  properly  be 
distinguished  from  the  cognitive  process  which  it  accompanies 
and  qualifies  is,  I  think,  obvious  and  indisputable.  The  propriety 
of  distinguishing  between  the  conative  element  in  consciousness, 
the  impulse,  appetite,  desire,  or  aversion,  and  the  accompanying 


52  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

than  the  visceral  organs  can  support,  so  that  they  are 
terminated  by  utter  exhaustion  or  death.  Men  also  have 
been  known  to  achieve  extraordinary  feats  of  running 
and  leaping  under  this  impulse;  there  is  a  well-known 
story  of  a  great  athlete  who,  when  pursued  as  a  boy  by 
a  savage  animal,  leaped  over  a  wall  which  he  could  not 
again  "clear"  until  he  attained  his  full  stature  and 
strength.  These  locomotory  activities  are  accompanied 
by  a  characteristic  complex  of  symptoms,  which  in  its 
main  features  is  common  to  man  and  to  many  of  the 
higher  animals,  and  which,  in  conjunction  with  the  vio- 
lent efforts  to  escape,  constitutes  so  unmistakable  an 
expression  of  the  emotion  of  fear  that  no  one  hesitates 
to  interpret  it  as  such;  hence  popular  speech  recognises 
the  connection  of  the  emotion  with  the  instinct  that  de- 
termines the  movements  of  flight  in  giving  them  the  one 
name  fear.  Terror,  the  most  intense  degree  of  this  emo- 
tion, may  involve  so  great  a  nervous  disturbance,  both 
in  men  and  animals,  as  to  defeat  the  ends  of  the  instinct 
by  inducing  general  convulsions  or  even  death.  In  cer- 
tain cases  of  mental  disease  the  patient's  disorder  seems 
to  consist  essentially  in  an  abnormal  excitability  of  this 
instinct  and  a  consequent  undue  frequency  and  intensity 
of  its  operation ;  the  patient  lives  perpetually  in  fear, 
shrinking  in  terror  from  the  most  harmless  animal  or  at 
the  least  unusual  sound,  and  surrounds  himself  with  safe- 
guards against  impossible  dangers. 

emotion  is  not  so  obvious.  For  these  features  are  most  inti- 
mately and  constantly  associated,  and  introspective  discrimina- 
tion of  them  is  usually  difficult.  Nevertheless  they  show  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  independence  of  one  another;  e.g.,  with  frequent 
repetition  of  a  particular  emotional  situation  and  reaction,  the 
affective  aspect  of  the  process  tends  to  become  less  prominent, 
while  the  impulse  grows  stronger. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN      53 

In  most  animals  this  instinct  may  be  excited  by  a 
variety  of  objects  ,and  sense-impressions  prior  to  all  ex- 
perience of  hurt  or  danger;  that  is  to  say,  the  innate 
disposition  has  several  afferent  inlets.  In  seme  of  the 
more  timid  creatures  it  would  seem  that  every  unfamiliar 
sound  or  sight  is  capable  of  exciting  it.^  In  civilised  man, 
whose  life  for  so  many  generations  has  been  more  or  less 
sheltered  from  the  dangers  peculiar  to  the  natural  state, 
the  instinct  exhibits  (like  all  complex  organs  and  func- 
tions that  are  not  kept  true  to  the  specific  type  by  rigid 
selection)  considerable  individual  differences,  especially 
on  its  receptive  side.  Hence  it  is  difficult  to  discover 
what  objects  and  impressions  were  its  natural  excitants 
in  primitive  man.  The  wail  of  the  very  young  infant 
has  but  little  variety;  but  mothers  claim  to  be  able  to 
distinguish  the  cries  of  fear,  of  anger,  and  of  bodily  dis- 
comfort, at  a  very  early  age,  and  it  is  probable  that  these 
three  modes  of  reaction  become  gradually  differentiated 
from  a  single  instinctive  impulse,  that  of  the  cry,  whose 
function  is  merely  to  signal  to  the  mother  the  need  of  her 
ministrations.  In  most  young  children  unmistakable  fear 
is  provoked  by  any  sudden  loud  noise  (some  being  espe- 
cially sensitive  to  harsh  deep-pitched  noises  even  though 
of  low  intensity),  and  all  through  life  such  noise  re- 
mains for  many  of  us  the  surest  and  most  frequent  ex- 
citant of  the  instinct.  Other  children,  while  still  in  arms, 
show  fear  if  held  too  loosely  when  carried  downstairs, 
or  if  the  arms  that  hold  them  are  suddenly  lowered.  In 
some,  intense  fear  is  excited  on  their  first  introduction 
at  close  quarters  to  a  dog  or  cat,  no  matter  how  quiet 
and  well-behaved  the  animal  may  be;  and  some  of  us 

^  It  may  be  noted  in  passing  that  this  is  one  of  a  class  of  facts 
which  offers  very  great  difficulty  to  any  attempt  to  account  for 
instinctive   action   on   purely   mechanical   principles. 


54  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

continue  all  through  life  to  experience  a  little  thrill  of 
fear  whenever  a  dog  runs  out  and  barks  at  our  heels, 
though  we  may  never  have  received  any  hurt  from  an 
animal  and  may  have  perfect  confidence  that  no  hurt  is 
likely  to  be  done  us.^ 

*  Lest  any  reader  should  infer,  from  what  is  said  above  of  the 
immediate  and  often  irrational  character  of  our  emotional  re- 
sponses upon  the  reception  of  certain  sense-impressions,  that 
I  accept  the  James-Lange  theory  of  emotion  in  the  extreme 
form  in  which  it  is  stated  by  Professor  James,  I  would  point 
out  that  the  acceptance  of  the  theory  is  by  no  means  implied 
by  my  treatment  of  emotion.  In  the  course  of  the  discussion  of 
instinct  in  the  preceding  chapter,  it  was  expressly  stated  that  the 
instinctive  process  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  merely  a  compound 
reflex,  initiated  by  crude  sensation,  but  tliat  its  first  stage  always 
involves  distinct  cognition,  which,  in  the  case  of  purely  in- 
stinctive action,  is  always  a  sense-perception.  That  is  to  say,  the 
sense-impressions  must  undergo  the  psychical  elaboration  and 
synthesis  implied  by  the  word  "perception" ;  but  such  perceptual 
elaboration  is  in  every  case  only  rendered  possible  by  the  ac- 
tivities of  a  preformed  psycho-physical  disposition,  which  in  the 
case  of  the  purely  instinctive  action  is  innately  organised.  Pro- 
fessor Ward  has  effectively  criticised  the  James-Lange  theory 
(Art.  "Psychology"  in  supplementary  volumes  of  "Encyclopedia 
Britannica,"  9th  edition),  and  I  would  in  the  main  endorse  that 
criticism,  though  I  think  Professor  Ward  does  not  sufficiently 
recognise  that  our  emotional  responses  are  bound  up  with,  and  in 
many  cases  are  immediately  determined  by,  simple  perceptions. 
He  writes :  "Let  Professor  James  be  confronted  first  by  a 
chained  bear  and  next  by  a  bear  at  large:  to  the  one  object  he 
presents  a  bun,  and  to  the  other  a  clean  pair  of  heels."  This 
passage  seems  by  implication  to  ignore  the  truth  I  wish  especially 
to  insist  upon,  namely,  the  immediacy  with  which  the  emotional 
response  follows  upon  perception,  if  the  perceptual  disposition 
involved  is  a  part  of  the  instinctive  disposition,  or  if  it  has  be- 
come connected  with  its  central  part  as  an  acquired  afferent  inlet 
in  the  way  discussed  in  Chapter  IL  There  is  a  world  of  differ- 
ence between,  on  the  one  hand,  the  instinctive  response  to  the 
object  that  excites  fear,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  running  away 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN      55 

In  other  persons,  again,  fear  is  excited  by  the  noise  of 
a  high  wind,  and  though  they  may  be  in  a  solidly  built 
house  that  has  weathered  a  hundred  storms,  they  will 
walk  restlessly  to  and  fro  throughout  every  stormy  night. 

In  most  animals  instinctive  flight  is  followed  by  equally 
instinctive  concealment  as  soon  as  cover  is  reached,  and 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  primitive  man  the  instinct 
had  this  double  tendency.  As  soon  as  the  little  child  can 
run,  his  fear  expresses  itself  in  concealment  following  on 
flight ;  and  the  many  adult  persons  who  seek  refuge  from 
the  strange  noises  of  dark  nights,  or  from  a  thunder- 
storm, by  covering  their  heads  with  the  bed-clothes,  and 
who  find  a  quite  irrational  comfort  in  so  doing,  illustrate 
the  persistence  of  this  tendency.  It  is,  perhaps,  in  the 
opposed  characters  of  these  two  tendencies,  both  of 
which  are  bound  up  with  the  emotion  of  fear,  that  we 
may  find  an  explanation  of  the  great  variety  of,  and 
variability  of,  the  symptoms  of  fear.  The  sudden  stop- 
ping of  heart-beat  and  respiration,  and  the  paralysis  of 
movement  in  which  it  sometimes  finds  expression,  are 
due  to  the  impulse  to  concealment ;  the  hurried  respira- 
tion' and  pulse,  and  the  frantic  bodily  eflforts,  by  which 

because  one  judges  that  discretion  is  the  better  part  of  valour.  I 
well  remember  standing  in  the  zoological  garden  at  Calcutta  be- 
fore a  very  strong  cage  in  which  was  a  huge  Bengal  tiger  fresh 
from  the  jungle.  A  low-caste  Hindu  sweeper  had  amused  him- 
self by  teasing  the  monster,  and  every  time  he  came  near  the 
cage  the  tiger  bounded  forward  with  an  awful  roar.  At  each  of 
many  repetitions  of  this  performance  a  cold  shudder  of  fear 
passed  over  me,  and  only  by  an  effort  could  I  restrain  the  im- 
pulse to  beat  a  hasty  retreat.  Though  I  knew  the  bars  confined 
the  brute  more  securely  than  any  chain,  it  was  not  because  the 
emotion  of  fear  and  the  corresponding  impulse  were  lacking 
that  I  did  not  show  a  "clean  pair  of  heels." 


56  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

it  is  more  commonly  expressed,  are  due  to  the  impulse 
to  flight.^ 

That  the  excitement  of  fear  is  not  necessarily,  or  in- 
deed usually,  the  effect  of  an  intelligent  appreciation  or 
anticipation  of  danger,  is  especially  well  shown  by  chil- 
dren of  four  or  five  years  of  age,  in  whom  it  may  be 
induced  by  the  facial  contortions  or  playful  roarings  of 
a  familiar  friend.  Under  these  circumstances,  a  child 
may  exhibit  every  symptom  of  fear  even  while  he  sits 
upon  his  tormentor's  lap  and,  with  arms  about  his  neck, 
beseeches  him  to  cease  or  to  promise  not  to  do  it  again. 
And  many  a  child  has  been  thrown  into  a  paroxysm  of 
terror  by  the  approach  of  some  hideous  figure  that  he 
knew  to  be  but  one  of  his  playfellows  in  disguise. 

Of  all  the  excitants  of  this  instinct  the  most  interest- 
ing, and  the  most  difficult  to  understand  as  regards  its 
mode  of  operation,  is  the  unfamiliar  or  strange  as  such. 
^Whatever  is  totally  strange,  whatever  is  violently  op- 
posed to  the  accustomed  and  familiar,  is  apt  to  excite 
fear  both  in  men  and  animals,  if  only  it  is  capable  of  at- 
tractnig  their  attention.  It  is,  I  think,  doubtful  whether 
an  eclipse  of  the  moon  has  ever  excited  the  fear  of  ani- 
mals, for  the  moon  is  not  an  object  of  their  attention ; 
but  for  savage  men  it  has  always  been  an  occasion  of 
fear.  The  well-known  case  of  the  dog  described  by  Ro- 
manes, that  was  terrified  by  the  movements  of  an  object 
jerked  forward  by  an  invisible  thread,  illustrates  the  fear- 
exciting  powers  of  the  unfamiliar  in  the  animal  world. 
The  following  incident  is  instructive  in  this  respect:    A 

^  It  is  worth  noting  that,  if  the  emotional  accompaniment  of 
these  two  very  different  sets  of  bodily  symptoms  seems  to  have 
essentially  the  same  quality  in  the  two  cases  and  to  be  unmistak- 
ably fear,  this  fact  is  very  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  James- 
Lange  theory  of  emotion  interpreted  in  a  literal  fashion. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN^  57 

courageous  child  of  five  years,  sitting  alone  in  a  sun- 
lit room,  suddenly  screams  in  terror,  and,  on  her  father 
hastening  to  her,  can  only  explain  that  she  saw  some- 
thing move.  The  discovery  of  a  mouse  in  the  corner  of 
the  room  at  once  explains  and  banishes  her  fear,  for 
she  is  on  friendly  terms  with  mice.  The  mouse  must 
have  darted  across  the  peripheral  part  of  her  field  of 
vision,  and  this  unexpected  and  unfamiliar  appearance 
of  movement  sufficed  to  excite  the  instinct.  This  avenue 
to  the  instinct,  the  unfamiliar,  becomes  in  man  highly 
diversified  and  intellectualised,  and  it  is  owing  to  this 
that  he  feels  fear  before  the  mysterious,  the  uncanny, 
and  the  supernatural,  and  that  fear,  entering  as  an  ele- 
ment into  the  complex  emotions  of  awe  and  reverence, 
plays  its  part  in  all  religions. 

Fear,  whether  its  impulse  be  to  flight  or  to  conceal- 
ment, is  characterised  by  the  fact  that  its  excitement, 
more  than  that  of  any  other  instinct,  tends  to  bring  to 
an  end  at  once  all  other  mental  activity,  riveting  the  at- 
tention upon  its  object  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others; 
owing,  probably,  to  this  extreme  concentration  of  atten- 
tion, as  well  as  to  the  violence  of  the  emotion,  the  excite- 
ment of  this  instinct  makes  a  deep  and  lasting  impression 
on  the  mind.  A  gust  of  anger,  a  wave  of  pity  or  of 
tender  emotion,  an  impulse  of  curiosity,  may  co-operate 
in  supporting  and  re-enforcing  mental  activities  of  the 
most  varied  kinds,  or  may  dominate  the  mind  for  a  time 
and  then  pass  away,  leaving  but  little  trace.  But  fear, 
once  roused,  haunts  the  mind ;  it  comes  back  alike  in 
dreams  and  waking  life,  bringing  with  it  vivid  mem- 
ories of  the  terrifying  impression.  It  is  thus  the  great» 
inhibitor  of  action,  both  present  action  and  future  ac- 
tion, and  becomes  in  primitive  human  societies  the  great 


58  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

agent  of  social  discipline  through  which  men  are  led  to 
the  habit  of  control  of  the  egoistic  impulses. 

The  Instinct  of  Reptdsion  and  the  Emotion  of  Disgust 

The  impulse  of  this  instinct  is,  like  that  of  fear,  one 
of  aversion,  and  these  two  instincts  together  account 
probably  for  all  aversions,  except  those  acquired  under 
the  influence  of  pain.  The  impulse  differs  from  that  of 
fear  in  that,  while  the  latter  prompts  to  bodily  retreat 
from  its  object,  the  former  prompts  to  actions  that  re- 
move or  reject  the  offending  object.  This  instinct  re- 
sembles fear  in  that  under  the  one  name  we,  perhaps, 
commonly  confuse  two  very  closely  allied  instincts  whose 
affective  aspects  are  so  similar  that  they  are  not  easily 
distinguishable,  though  their  impulses  are  of  different 
tendencies.  The  one  impulse  of  repulsion  is  to  reject 
from  the  mouth  substances  that  excite  the  instinct  in  vir- 
ture  of  their  odour  or  taste,  substances  which  in  the  main 
are  noxious  and  evil-tasting;  its  biological  utility  is  ob- 
vious. The  other  impulse  of  repulsion  seems  to  be  ex- 
cited by  the  contact  of  slimy  and  slippery  substances  with 
the  skin,  and  to  express  itself  as  a  shrinking  of  the  whole 
body,  accompanied  by  a  throwing  forward  of  the  hands. 
The  common  shrinking  from  slimy  creatures  with  a 
"creepy"  shudder  seems  to  be  the  expression  of  this  im- 
pulse. It  is  difficult  to  assign  any  high  biological  value 
to  it  (unless  we  connect  it  with  the  necessity  of  avoid- 
ing noxious  reptiles),  but  it  is  clearly  displayed  by  some 
children  before  the  end  of  their  first  year;  thus  in  some 
infants  furry  things  excite  shrinking  and  tears  at  their 
first  contact.  In  others  the  instinct  seems  to  ripen  later, 
and  the  child  that  has  handled  worms,  frogs,  and  slugs 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     59 

with  delight  suddenly  evinces  an  unconquerable  aversion 
to  contact  with  them. 

These  two  forms  of  disgust  illustrate  in  the  clearest 
and  most  interesting  manner  the  intellectualisation  of  the 
instincts  and  primary  emotions  through  extension  of  the 
range  of  their  objects  by  association,  resemblance,  and 
analogy.  The  manners  or  speech  of  an  otherwise  pre- 
sentable person  may  excite  the  impulse  of  shrinking  in 
virtue  of  some  subtle  suggestion  of  sliminess.  Or  what 
we  know  of  a  man's  character — that  it  is  noxious,  or, 
as  we  significantly  say,  is  of  evil  odour — may  render  the 
mere  thought  of  him  an  occasion  of  disgust;  we  say,  "It 
makes  me  sick  to  think  of  him" ;  and  at  the  same  time 
the  face  exhibits  in  some  degree,  however  slight,  the  ex- 
pression produced  by  the  act  of  rejection  of  some  evil- 
tasting  substance  from  tlie  mouth.  In  these  cases  we 
may  see  very  clearly  that  this  extension  by  resemblance 
or  analogy  does  not  take  place  in  any  roundabout  fash- 
ion^ it  is  not  that  the  thought  of  the  noxious  or  "slip- 
pery" character  necessarily  reproduces  the  idea  of  some 
evil-tasting  substance  or  of  some  slimy  creature.  Rather, 
the  apprehension  of  these  peculiarities  of  character  ex- 
cites disgust  directly,  and  then,  when  we  seek  to  account 
for,  and  to  justify,  our  disgust,  we  cast  about  for  some 
simile  and  say,  "He  is  like  a  snake,"  or  "He  is  rotten 
to  the  core !"  The  common  form  of  emotion  serves  as 
the  link  between  the  two  ideas. 

The  Instinct  of  Curiosity  and  the  Emotion  of  Wonder 

The  instinct  of  curiosity  is  displayed  by  many  of  the 
higher  animals,  although  its  impulse  remains  relatively 
feeble  in  most  of  them.  And,  in  fact,  it  is  obvious  that  it 
could  not  easily  attain  any  considerable  strength  in  any 


6o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

animal  species,  because  the  individuals  that  displayed 
a  too  strong  curiosity  would  be  peculiarly  liable  to  meet 
an  untimely  end.  For  its  impulse  is  to  approach  and 
to  examine  more  closely  the  object  that  excites  it — a 
fact  well  known  to  hunters  in  the  wilds,  who  sometimes 
by  exciting  this  instinct  bring  the  curious  animal  within 
the  reach  of  their  weapons.  The  native  excitant  of  the 
instinct  would  seem  to  be  any  object  similar  to,  yet  per- 
ceptibly different  from,  familiar  objects  habitually  no- 
ticed. It  is  therefore  not  easy  to  distinguish  in  general 
terms  between  the  excitants  of  curiosity  and  those  of 
fear;  for  we  have  seen  that  one  of  the  most  general  ex- 
citants of  fear  is  whatever  is  strange  or  unfamiliar.  The 
difference  seems  to  be  mainly  one  of  degree,  a  smaller 
element  of  the  strange  or  unusual  exciting  curiosity, 
while  a  larger  and  more  pronounced  degree  of  it  excites 
fear.  Hence  the  two  instincts,  with  their  opposed  im- 
pulses of  approach  and  retreat,  are  apt  to  be  excited  in 
animals  and  very  young  children  in  rapid  alternation,  and 
simultaneously  in  ourselves.  Who  has  not  seen  a  horse, 
or  other  animal,  alternately  approach  in  curiosity,  and  flee 
in  fear  from,  some  such  object  as  an  old  coat  upon  the 
ground  ?  And  who  has  not  experienced  a  fearful  curios- 
ity in  penetrating  some  dark  cave  or  some  secret  cham- 
ber of  an  ancient  castle?  The  behaviour  of  animals  un- 
der the  impulse  of  curiosity  may  be  well  observed  by  any 
one  who  will  lie  down  in  a  field  where  sheep  or  cattle 
are  grazing  and  repeat  at  short  intervals  some  peculiar 
cry.  In  this  way  one  may  draw  every  member  of  a  large 
flock  nearer  and  nearer,  until  one  finds  oneself  the  centre 
of  a  circle  of  them,  drawn  up  at  a  respectful  distance,  of 
which  every  pair  of  eyes  and  ears  is  intently  fixed  upon 
the  strange  object  of  their  curiosity. 

In  the  animals  nearest  to  ourselves,  namely,  the  mon- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     6i 

keys,  curiosity  is  notoriously  strong,  and  them  it  impels 
not'rn'erely  to  approach  its  object  and  to  direct  the  senses 
attentively  upon  it,  but  also  to  active  manipulation  of  it. 
That  a  similar  impulse  is  strong  in  children,  no  one  will 
deny.  Exception  may  perhaps  be  taken  to  the  use  of 
wonder  as  the  name  for  the  primary  emotion  that  ac- 
companies this  impulse;  for  this  word  is  commonly  ap- 
plied to  a  complex  emotion  of  which  this  primary  emo- 
tion is  the  chief  but  not  the  sole  constituent.^  But,  as 
was  said  above,  some  specialisation  for  technical  purposes 
of  words  in  common  use  is  inevitable  in  psychology,  and 
in  this  instance  it  is,  I  think,  desirable  and  justifiable, 
owing  to  the  lack  of  any  more  appropriate  word. 

This  instinct,  being  one  whose  exercise  is  not  of  prime 
importance  to  the  individual,  exhibits  great  individual  -- 
differences  as  regards  its  innate  strength ;  and  these  dif- 
ferences are  apt  to  be  increased  during  the  course  of 
life,  the  impulse  growing  weaker  for  lack  of  use  in  those 
in  whom  it  is  innately  weak,  stronger  through  exercise  in 
those  in  whom  it  is  innately  strong.  In  men  of  the  latter 
type  it  may  become  the  main  source  of  intellectual  en- 
ergy and  effort ;  to  its  impulse  we  certainly  owe  most 
of  the  purely  disinterested  labours  of  the  highest  types  of 
intellect.  It  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  principal  * 
roots  of  both  science  and  religion. 

The  Instinct  of  Pugnacity  and  the  Emotion  of  Anger 

This  instinct,  though  not  so  nearly  universal  as  fear, 
being  apparently  lacking  in  the  constitution  of  the  fe- 
males of  some  species,  ranks  with  fear  as  regards  the 

^A  form  of  admiration  in  which  curiosity  (or  wonder  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  word'  is  here  used)  predominates  (see  chap, 
v.). 


62  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

great  strength  of  its  impulse,  and  the  high  intensity  of  the 
emotion  it  generates.  It  occupies  a  pecuhar  position  in 
relation  to  the  other  instincts,  and  cannot  strictly  be 
brought  under  the  definition  of  instinct  proposed  in  the 
first  chapter.  For  it  has  no  specific  object  or  objects  the 
perception  of  which  constitutes  the  initial  stage  of  the 
instinctive  process.  The  condition  of  its  excitement  is 
rather  any  opposition  to  the  free  exercise  of  any  im- 
pulse, any  obstruction  to  the  activity  to  which  the  crea- 
ture is  impelled  by  any  one  of  the  other  instincts.^  And 
its  impulse  is  to  break  down  any  such  obstruction  and  to 
destroy  whatever  offers  this  opposition.  This  instinct 
thus  presuppoiies  the  others ;  its  excitement  is  dependent 
upon,  or  secondary  to,  the  excitement  of  the  others,  and 
is  apt  to  be  intense  in  proportion  to  the  strength  of  the 
obstructed  impulse.  The  most  mean-spirited  cur  will 
angrily  resent  any  attempt  to  take  away  its  bone,  if  it 
is  hungry;  a  healthy  infant  very  early  displays  anger, 

*  It  may  be  objected  that,  if  a  man  strikes  me  a  sudden  and 
unprovoked  blow,  my  anger  is  effectually  and  instantaneously 
aroused,  even  when  I  am  at  the  moment  not  actively  engaged  in 
any  way;  for  it  may  be  said  that  in  this  case  the  blow  does  not 
obstruct  or  oppose  any  impulse  working  within  me  at  the  mo- 
ment. To  raise  this  objection  would  be  to  ignore  my  conscious- 
ness of  the  persona!  relation  and  my  personal  attitude  towards 
the  striker.  The  impulse,  the  thwarting  of  which  in  this  case 
provokes  my  anger,  is  the  impulse  of  self-assertion,  which  is 
habitually  in  play  during  personal  intercourse.  That  this  is  the 
case  we  may  see  on  reflecting  that  anger  would  not  be  aroused 
if  the  blow  came  from  a  purely  impersonal  source — if,  for  ex- 
ample, it  came  from  a  falling  branch,  or  if  the  blov/  received 
from  a  person  were  clearly  quite  accidental  and  unavoidab'.e 
under  the  circumstances.  Anger  at  the  stupidity  of  others  might 
also  be  quoted  as  an  instance  not  conformable  to  the  law;  but 
it  is  only  when  such  stupidity  hinders  the  execution  of  some 
plan  that  the  normal  man  is  angered  by  it. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     63 

if  his  meal  is  interrupted ;  and  all  through  life  most  men 
find  it  difficult  to  suppress  irritation  on  similar  occasions. 
In  the  animal  world  the  most  furious  excitement  of  this 
instinct  is  provoked  in  the  male  of  many  species  by  any 
interference  with  the  satisfaction  of  the  sexual  impulse ; 
since  such  interference  is  the  most  frequent  occasion  of 
its  excitement,  and  since  it  commonly  comes  from  other 
male  members  of  his  own  species,  the  actions  innately 
organised  for  securing  the  ends  of  this  instinct  are  such 
actions  as  are  most  effective  in  combat  with  his  fellows. 
Hence,  also,  the  defensive  apparatus  of  the  male  is  usu- 
ally, like  the  lion's  or  the  stallion's  mane,  especially  adapt- 
ed for  defence  against  the  attacks  of  his  fellows.  But 
the  obstruction  of  every  other  instinctive  impulse  may 
in  its  turn  become  the  occasion  of  anger.  We  see  how 
among  the  animals  even  the  fear-impulse,  the  most  op- 
posed in  tendency  to  the  pugnacious,  may  on  obstruc- 
tion give  place  to  it ;  for  the  hunted  creature  when 
brought  to  bay —  i.e.,  when  its  impulse  to  flight  is  ob- 
structed— is  apt  to  turn  upon  its  pursuers  and  to  fight 
furiously,  until  an  opportunity  for  escape  presents  itself. 
Darwin  has  shown  the  significance  of  the  facial  expres- 
sion of  anger,  of  the  contracted  brow  and  raised  upper 
lip ;  and  man  shares  with  many  of  the  animals  the  ten- 
dency to  frighten  his  opponent  by  loud  roars  or  bellow- 
ings.  As  with  most  of  the  other  human  instincts,  the 
excitement  of  this  one  is  expressed  in  its  purest  form  by 
children.  Many  a  little  boy  has,  without  any  example  or 
suggestion,  suddenly  taken  to  running  with  open  mouth 
to  bite  the  person  who  has  angered  him,  much  to  the 
distress  of  his  parents.  As  the  child  grows  up,  as  self- 
control  becomes  stronger,  the  life  of  ideas  richer,  and 
the  means  we  take  to  overcome  obstructions  to  our  efforts 
more  refined  and  complex,  this  instinct  ceases  to  express 


64  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

itself  in  its  crude  natural  manner,  save  when  most  in- 
tensely excited,  and  becomes  rather  a  source  of  increased 
energy  of  action  towards  the  end  set  by  any  other  in- 
stinct; the  energy  of  its  impulse  adds  itself  to  and  rein- 
forces that  of  other  impulses  and  so  helps  us  to  overcome 
our  difficulties.  In  this  lies  its  great  value  for  civilised 
man.  A  man  devoid  of  the  pugnacious  instinct  would 
not  only  be  incapable  of  anger,  but  would  lack  this  great 
source  of  reserve  energy  which  is  called  into  play  in  most 
of  us  by  any  difficulty  in  our  path.  In  this  respect  also 
it  is  the  opposite  of  fear,  which  tends  to  inhibit  all  other 
impulses  than  its  own. 

The  Instincts  of  Self-abasement  {or  Subjection)  and  of 
Self-assertion  (or  Self -display)  ^  and  the  Emotions    - 
of  Subjection  and  Elation  {or  Negative  and  Positive 
Self -feeling) 

These  two  instincts  have  attracted  little  attention,  and 
the  two  corresponding  emotions  have,  so  far  as  I  know, 
been  adequately  recognised  by  M.  Ribot  alone,^  whom 
I  follow  in  placing  them  among  the  primary  emotions. 
Ribot  names  the  two  emotions  negative  and  positive  self- 
feeling  respectively,  but  since  these  names  are  awkward 
in  English,  I  propose,  in  the  interests  of  a  consistent 
terminology,  to  call  them  the  emotions  of  subjection  and 
elation.  The  clear  recognition  and  understanding  of 
these  instincts,  more  especially  of  the  instinct  of  self- 
display,  is  of  the  first  importance  for  the  psychology  of 
character  and  volition,  as  I  hope  to  show  in  a  later  chap- 
ter.   At  present  I  am  only  concerned  to  prove  that  they 

*  "Psychology   of   the   Emotions,"  p.   240. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     65 

have  a  place  in  the  native  constitution  of  the  human 
mind. 

The  instinct  of  self-display  is  manifested  by  many  of 
the  higher  social  or  gregarious  animals,  especially,  per- 
haps, though  not  only,  at  the  time  of  mating.  Perhaps 
among  mammals  the  horse  displays  it  most  clearly.  The 
muscles  of  all  parts  are  strongly  innervated,  the  creature 
holds  himself  erect,  his  neck  is  arched,  his  tail  lifted,  his 
motions  become  superfluously  vigorous  and  extensive,  he 
lifts  his  hoofs  high  in  air,  as  he  parades  before  the  eyes 
of  his  fellows.  Many  animals,  especially  the  birds,  but 
also  some  of  the  monkeys,  are  provided  with  organs  of 
display  that  are  specially  disposed  on  these  occasions. 
Such  are  the  tail  of  the  peacock  and  the  beautiful  breast 
of  the  pigeon.  The  instinct  is  essentially  a  social  one, 
and  is  only  brought  into  play  by  the  presence  of  specta- 
tors. Such  self-display  is  popularly  recognised  as  im- 
plying pride ;  we  say  "How  proud  he  looks !"  and  the 
peacock  has  become  the  symbol  of  pride.  By  psychol- 
ogists pride  is  usually  denied  the  animals,  because  it  is 
held  to  imply  self-consciousness,  and  that,  save  of  the 
most  rudimentary  kind,  they  probably  have  not.  But 
this  denial  arises  from  the  current  confusion  of  the  emo- 
tions and  the  sentiments.  The  word  "pride"  is  no  doubt 
most  properly  to  be  used  as  the  name  of  one  form  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment,  and  such  sentiment  does  imply 
a  developed  self-consciousness  such  as  no  animal  can  be 
credited  with.  Nevertheless,  popular  opinion  is,  I  think, 
in  the  right  in  attributing  to  the  animals  in  their  mo- 
ments of  self-display  the  germ  of  the  emotion  that  is  the 
most  essential  constituent  of  pride.  It  is  this  primary 
emotion  which  may  be  called  positive  self-feeling  or  ela- 
tion, and  which  might  well  be  called  pride,  if  that  word 
were  not  required  to  denote  the  sentiment  of  pride.     In 


66  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  simple  form,  in  which  it  is  expressed  by  the  self- 
display  of  animals,  it  does  not  necessarily  imply  self-con- 
sciousness. 

Many  children  clearly  exhibit  this  instinct  of  self-dis- 
play; before  they  can  walk  or  talk  the  impulse  finds  its 
satisfaction  in  the  admiring  gaze  and  plaudits  of  the  fam- 
ily circle  as  each  new  acquirement  is  practised;^  a  little 
later  it  is  still  more  clearly  expressed  by  the  frequently 
repeated  command,  "See  me  do  this,"  or  "See  how  well 
I  can  do  so-and-so" ;  and  for  many  a  child  more  than 
half  the  delight  of  riding  on  a  pony,  or  of  wearing  a 
new  coat,  consists  in  the  satisfaction  of  this  instinct,  and 
vanishes  if  there  be  no  spectators.  A  little  later,  with  the 
growth  of  self-consciousness  the  instinct  may  find  expres- 
sion in  the  boasting  and  swaggering  of  boys,  the  vanity 
of  girls ;  while,  with  almost  all  of  us,  it  becomes  the  most 
important  constituent  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  and 
plays  an  all-important  part  in  the  volitional  control  of 
conduct,  in  the  way  to  be  discussed  in  a  later  chapter. 

The  situation  that  more  particularly  excites  this  in- 
stinct is  the  presence  of  spectators  to  whom  one  feels  one- 
self for  any  reason,  or  in  any  way,  superior,  and  this 
is  perhaps  true  in  a  modified  sense  of  the  animals ;  the 
"dignified"  behaviour  of  a  big  dog  in  the  presence  of 
small  ones,  the  stately  strutting  of  a  hen  among  her 
chicks,  seem  to  be  instances  in  point.  We  have,  then, 
good  reason  to  believe  that  the  germ  of  this  emotion  is 
present  in  the  animal  world,  and,  if  we  make  use  of  our 
second  criterion  of  the  primary  character  of  an  emotion, 

*  One  of  my  boys,  who  learnt  to  walk  when  eighteen  months 
old,  delighted  in  the  applause  that  greeted  his  first  steps,  and, 
every  time  that  one  of  his  many  excursions  across  the  room 
failed  to  evoke  it,  he  threw  himself  prone  upon  the  floor  with 
loud  cries  of  anger  and  displeasure.   . 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     67 

it  answers  well  to  the  test.  For  in  certain  mental  dis- 
eases, especially  in  the  early  stages  of  that  most  terrible 
disorder,  general  paralysis  of  the  insane,  exaggeration  of 
this  emotion  and  of  its  impulse  of  display  is  the  leading 
symptom.  The  unfortunate  patient  is  perpetually  in  a 
state  of  elated  self-feeling,  and  his  behaviour  corre- 
sponds to  his  emotional  state ;  he  struts  before  the  world, 
boasts  of  his  strength,  his  immense  wealth,  his  good 
looks,  his  luck,  his  family,  when,  perhaps,  there  is  not 
the  least  foundation  for  his  boastings. 

As  regards  the  emotion  of  subjection  or  negative  self- 
feeling,  we  have  the  same  grounds  for  regarding  it  as  a 
primary  emotion  that  accompanies  the  excitement  of  an 
instinctive  disposition.  The  impulse  of  this  instinct  ex- 
presses itself  in  a  slinking,  crestfallen  behaviour,  a  gen- 
eral diminution  of  muscular  tone,  slow  restricted  move- 
ments, a  hanging  down  of  the  head,  and  sidelong  glances. 
In  the  dog  the  picture  is  completed  by  the  sinking  of  the 
tail  between  the  legs.  All  these  features  express  sub- 
missiveng^gs.  and  are  calculated  to  avoid  attracting  atten- 
tion or  to  mollify  the  spectator.  The  nature  of  the  in- 
stinct is  sometimes  very  completely  expressed  in  the  be- 
haviour of  a  young  dog  on  the  approach  of  a  larger,  older 
dog;  he  crouches  or  crawls  with  legs  so  bent  that  his 
belly  scrapes  the  ground,  his  back  hollowed,  his  tail 
tucked  away,  his  head  sunk  and  turned  a  little  on  one 
side,  and  so  approaches  the  imposing  stranger  with  every 
mark  of  submission. 

The  recognition  of  this  behaviour  as  the  expression  of 
a  special  instinct  of  self-abasement  and  of  a  correspond- 
ing primary  emotion  enables  us  to  escape  from  a  much- 
discussed  difficulty.  It  has  been  asked,  "Can  animals  and 
young  children  that  have  not  attained  to  self-conscious- 
ness  feel  shame?"     And  the  answer  usually  given  is, 


68  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

"No ;  shame  implies  self-consciousness."  Yet  some 
animals,  notably  the  dog,  sometimes  behave  in  a  way 
which  the  popular  mind  interprets  as  expressing  shame. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  while  fully-developed  shame, 
shame  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  does  imply  self -con- 
sciousness and  a  self -regarding  sentiment,  yet  in  the  emo- 
tion that  accompanies  this  impulse  to  slink  submissively 
we  may  see  the  rudiment  of  shame ;  and,  if  we  do  not 
recognise  this  instinct,  it  is  impossible  to  account  for  the 
genesis  of  shame  or  of  bashfulness. 

In  children  the  expression  of  this  emotion  is  often 
mistaken  for  that  of  fear ;  but  the  young  child  sitting  on 
his  mother's  lap  in  perfect  silence  with  face  averted, 
casting  sidelong  glances  at  a  stranger,  presents  a  picture 
very  different  from  that  of  fear. 

Applying,  again,  our  pathological  test,  we  find  that  it 
is  satisfied  by  this  instinct  of  self-abasement.  In  many 
cases  of  mental  disorder  the  exaggerated  influence  of  this 
instinct  seems  to  determine  the  leading  symptoms.  The 
patient  shrinks  from  the  observation  of  his  fellows, 
thinks  himself  a  most  wretched,  useless,  sinful  creature, 
and,  in  many  cases,  he  develops  delusions  of  having  per- 
formed various  unworthy  or  even  criminal  actions ;  many 
such  patients  declare  they  are  guilty  of  the  unpardon- 
able sin,  although  they  attach  no  definite  meaning  to  the 
phrase — that  is  to  say,  the  patient's  intellect  endeavours 
to  justify  the  persistent  emotional  state,  which  has  no 
adequate  cause  in  his  relations  to  his  fellow-men. 

The  Parental  Instinct  and  the  Tender  Emotion 

As  regards  the  parental  instinct  and  tender  emotion, 
there  are  wide  differences  of  opinion.  Some  of  the  au- 
thors who  have  paid  most  attention  to  the  psychology  of 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     69 

the  emotions,  notably  Mr.  A.  F.  Shand,  do  not  recognise 
tender  emotion  as  primary;^  others,  especially  Mr.  Alex. 
Sutherland  ^  and  M.  Ribot,^  recognise  it  as  a  true  pri- 
mary and  see  in  its  impulse  the  root  of  all  altruism;  Mr. 
Sutherland,  however,  like  Adam  Smith  and  many  other 
writers,  has  confused  tender  emotion  with  sympathy,  a 
serious  error  of  incomplete  analysis,  which  Ribot  has 
avoided. 

The  maternal  instinct,  which  impels  the  mother  to  pro- 
tect and  cherish  her  young,  is  common  to  almost  all  the 
higher  species  of  animals.  Among  the  lower  animals  the 
perpetuation  of  the  species  is  generally  provided  for  by 
the  production  of  an  immense  number  of  eggs  or  young 
(in  some  species  of  fish  a  single  adult  produces  more 
than  a  million  eggs),  which  are  left  entirely  unprotected, 
and  are  so  preyed  upon  by  other  creatures  that  on  the 
average  but  one  or  two  attain  maturity.  As  we  pass 
higher  up  the  animal  scale,  we  find  the  number  of  eggs 
or  young  more  and  more  reduced,  and  the  diminution  of 
their  number  compensated  for  by  parental  protection. 
At  the  lowest  stage  this  protection  may  consist  in  the 
provision  of  some  merely  physical  shelter,  as  in  the  case 
of  those  animals  that  carry  their  eggs  attached  in  some 
way  to  their  bodies.  But,  except  at  this  lowest  stage, 
the  protection  aflforded  to  the  young  always  involves 
some  instinctive  adaptation  of  the  parent's  behaviour. 
We  may  see  this  even  among  the  fishes,  some  of  which 
deposit  their  eggs  in  rude  nests  and  watch  over  them, 
driving  away  creatures  that  might  prey  upon  them.  From 
this  stage  onwards  protection  of  offspring  becomes  in- 

*  See    his    chapter    on    the     emotions    in    Professor    Stout's 
"Groundwork  of  Psychology." 
'  ''Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct." 
'Op.  cit. 


70  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

creasingly  psychical  in  character,  involves  more  profound 
modification  of  the  parent's  behaviour  and  a  more  pro- 
longed period  of  more  effective  guardianship.  The.  high- 
est stage  is  reached  by  those  species  in  which  each  female 
produces  at  a  birth  but  one  or  two  young  and  protects 
them  so  efficiently  that  most  of  the  young  born  reach  ma- 
turity; the  maintenance  of  the  species  thus  becomes  in 
the  main  the  work  of  the  parental  instinct.  In  such 
species  the  protection  and  cherishing  of  the  young  is  the 
constant  and  all-absorbing  occupation  of  the  mother,  to 
which  she  devotes  all  her  energies,  and  in  the  course  of 
which  she  will  at  any  time  undergo  privation,  pain  and 
death.  The  instinct  becomes  more  powerful  than  any 
other,  and  can  override  any  other,  even  fear  itself ; 
for  it  works  directly  in  the  service  of  the  species,  while 
the  other  instincts  work  primarily  in  the  service  of  the 
individual  life,  for  which  Nature  cares  little.  All  this 
has  been  well  set  out  by  Sutherland,  with  a  wealth  of 
illustrative  detail,  in  his  work  on  "The  Origin  and 
Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct." 

When  we  follow  up  the  evolution  of  this  instinct  to 
the  highest  animal  level,  we  find  among  the  apes  the  most 
remarkable  examples  of  its  operation.  Thus  in  one  spe- 
cies the  mother  is  said  to  carry  her  young  one  clasped 
in  one  arm  uninterruptedly  for  several  months,  never  let- 
ting go  of  it  in  all  her  wanderings.  This  instinct  is  no 
less  strong  in  many  human  mothers,  in  whom,  of  course, 
it  becomes  more  or  less  intellectualised  and  organised  as 
the  most  essential  constituent  of  the  sentiment  of  pa- 
rental love.  Like  other  species,  the  human  species  is 
dependent  upon  this  instinct  for  its  continued  existence 
and  welfare.  It  is  true  that  reasofi,  working  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  egoistic  impulses  and  sentiments,  often  cir- 
cumvents the  ends  of  this  ^nstinct  and  sets  up  habits 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN      71 

which  are  incompatible  with  it.  When  that  occurs  on  a 
large  scale  in  any  society,  that  society  is  doomed  to  rapid 
decay.  But  the  instinct  itself  can  never  die  out,  save 
with  the  disappearance  of  the  human  species  itself ;  it  is 
kept  strong  and  effective  just  because  those  families  and 
races  and  nations  in  which  it  weakens  become  rapidly 
supplanted  by  those  in  which  it  is  strong. 

It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the  operation  of  this, 
the  most  powerful  of  the  instincts,  is  not  accompanied  by 
a  strong  and  definite  emotion ;  one  may  see  the  emotion 
expressed  unmistakably  by  almost  any  mother  among  the 
higher  animals,  especially  the  birds  and  the  mammals — 
by  the  cat,  for  example,  and  by  most  of  the  domestic 
animals;  and  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  this  emotion 
has  in  all  cases  the  peculiar  quality  of  the  tender  emotion 
provoked  in  the  human  parent  by  the  spectacle  of  her 
helpless  offspring.  This  primary  emotion  has  been  very 
generally  ignored  by  the  philosophers  and  psychologists ; 
that  is,  perhaps,  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  this  in- 
stinct and  its  emotion  are  in  the  main  decidedly  weaker 
in  men  than  in  women,  and  in  some  men,  perhaps,  alto- 
gether lacking.  We  may  even  surmise  that  the  philos- 
ophers as  a  class  are  men  among  whom  this  defect  of 
native  endowment  is  relatively  common. 

It  may  be  asked,  How  can  we  account  for  the  fact  that 
men  are  at  all  capable  of  this  emotion  and  of  this  dis- 
interested protective  impulse?  For  in  its  racial  origin 
the  instinct  was  undoubtedly  primarily  maternal.  The 
answer  is  that  it  is  very  common  to  see  a  character,  ac- 
quired by  one  sex  to  meet  its  special  needs,  transmitted, 
generally  imperfectly  and  with  large  individual  varia- 
tions, to  the  members  of  the  other  sex.  Familiar  ex- 
amples of  such  transmission  of  sexual  characters  are  af- 
forded by  the  horns  and  antlers  of  some  species  of  sheep 


72  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  deer.  That  the  parental  instinct  is  by  no  means  alto- 
gether lacking  in  men  is  probably  due  in  the  main  to  such 
transference  of  a  primarily  maternal  instinct,  though  it  is 
probable  that  in  the  human  species  natural  selection  has 
confirmed  and  increased  its  inheritance  by  the  male  sex. 

To  this  view,  that  the  parental  tenderness  of  human 
beings  depends  upon  an  instinct  phylogenetically  contin- 
uous with  the  parental  instinct  of  the  higher  animals,  it 
might  be  objected  that  the  very  widespread  prevalence  of 
infanticide  among  existing  savages  implies  that  primitive 
man  lacked  this  instinct  and  its  tender  emotion.  But  that 
would  be  a  most  mistaken  objection.  There  is  no  fea- 
ture of  savage  life  more  nearly  universal  than  the  kind- 
ness and  tenderness  of  savages,  even  of  savage  fathers, 
for  their  little  children.  All  observers  are  agreed  upon 
this  point.  I  have  many  a  time  watched  with  interest  a 
bloodthirsty  head-hunter  of  Borneo  spending  a  day  at 
home  tenderly  nursing  his  infant  in  his  arms.  And  it  is 
a  rule,  to  which  there  are  few  exceptions  among  savage 
peoples,  that  an  infant  is  only  killed  during  the  first 
hours  of  its  life.  If  the  child  is  allowed  to  survive  but 
a  few  days,  then  its  life  is  safe;  the  tender  emotion  has 
been  called  out  in  fuller  strength  and  has  begun  to  be 
organised  into  a  sentiment  of  parental  love  that  is  too 
strong  to  be  overcome  by  prudential  or  purely  selfish 
considerations.^ 

The  view  of  the  origin  of  parental  tenderness  here 
adopted  compares,  I  think,  very  favourably  with  other  ac- 
counts of  its  genesis.  Bain  taught  that  it  is  generated  in 
the  individual  by  the  frequent  repetition  of  the  intense 
pleasure  of  contact  with  the  young;  though  why  this  con- 

*C/.  Chap.  XVII.  of  E.  Westermarck's  "Origin  and  Develop- 
ment of  the  Moral  Ideas."    London,  1906. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     yz 

tact  should  be  so  highly  pleasurable  he  did  not  explain.^ 
Others  have  attributed  to  the  expectation  by  the  parent 
of  filial  care  in  his  or  her  old  age.  This  is  one  form  of 
the  absurd  and  constantly  renewed  attempt  to  reveal  all 
altruism  as  arising  essentially  out  of  a  more  or  less  subtle 
regard  for  one's  own  welfare  or  pleasure.  If  tender  emo- 
tion and  the  sentiment  of  love  really  arose  from  a  dis- 
guised selfishness  of  this  sort,  how  much  stronger  should 
be  the  love  of  the  child  for  the  parent  than  that  of  the 
parent  for  the  child !  For  the  child  is  for  many  years 
utterly  dependent  on  the  parent  for  his  every  pleasure 
and  the  satisfaction  of  his  every  need ;  whereas  the  moth- 
er's part — if  she  were  not  endowed  with  this  powerful 
instinct — would  be  one  long  succession  of  sacrifices  and 
painful  efforts  on  behalf  of  her  child.  Parental  love  must 
always  appear  an  insoluble  riddle  and  paradox  if  we  do 
not  recognise  this  primary  emotion,  deeply  rooted  in  an 
ancient  instinct  of  vital  importance  to  the  race.  Long 
ago  the  Roman  moralists  were  perplexed  by  it.  They 
noticed  that  in  the  Sullan  prosecutions,  while  many  sons 
denounced  their  fathers,  no  father  was  ever  known  to 
denounce  his  son ;  and  they  recognised  that  this  fact  was 
inexplicable  by  their  theories  of  conduct.  For  their  doc- 
trine was  like  that  of  Bain,  who  said  explicitly:  "Tender 
feeling  is  as  purely  self-seeking  as  any  other  pleasure, 
and  makes  no  inquiry  as  to  the  feelings  of  the  beloved 
personality.  It  is  by  nature  pleasurable,  but  does  not 
necessarily  cause  us  to  seek  the  good  of  the  object  farther 
than  is  needful  to  gratify  ourselves  in  the  indulgence  of 
the  feeling."  And  again,  in  express  reference  to  mater- 
nal tenderness,  he  wrote:  "The  superficial  observer  has 
to  be  told  that  the  feeling  in  itself  is  as  purely  self-re- 
garding as  the  pleasure  of  wine  or  of  music.    Under  it  we 

'"Emotions  and  the  Will,"  p.  82. 


74  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

are  induced  to  seek  the  presence  of  the  beloved  objects 
and  to  make  the  requisite  sacrifices  to  gain  the  end, 
looking  all  the  while  at  our  own  pleasure  and  to  nothing 
beyond."  ^  This  doctrine  is  a  gross  libel  on  human  na- 
ture, which  is  not  so  far  inferior  to  animal  nature  in  this 
respect  as  Bain's  words  imply.  If  Bain,  and  those  who 
agree  with  his  doctrine,  were  in  the  right,  everything  the 
cynics  have  said  of  human  nature  would  be  justified ;  for 
from  this  emotion  and  its  impulse  to  cherish  and  protect 
spring  generosity,  gratitude,  love,  pity,  true  benevolence, 
and  altruistic  conduct  of  every  kind ;  in  it  they  have  their 
main  and  absolutely  essential  root,  without  which  they 
would  not  be.^ 

Like  the  other  primary  emotions,  the  tender  emotion 
cannot  be  described ;  a  person  who  had  not  experienced 
it  could  no  more  be  made  to  understand  its  quality  than 
a  totally  colour-blind  person  can  be  made  to  understand 
the  experience  of  colour-sensation.  Its  impulse  is  pri- 
marily to  aflford  physical  protection  to  the  child,  especial- 
ly by  throwing  the  arms  about  it ;  and  that  fundamental 
impulse  persists  in  spite  of  the  immense  extension  of  the 
range  of  application  of  the  impulse  and  its  incorporation 
in  many  ideal  sentiments.^ 

Like  all  the  other  instinctive  impulses,  this  one,  when 
its  operation  meets  with  obstruction  or  opposition,  gives 

*  Op.  cit.,  p.  80. 

'  There  are  women,  happily  few,  whose  attitude  towards  their 
children  shows  them  to  be  devoid  of  the  maternal  instinct. 
Reflection  upon  the  conduct  of  such  a  woman  will  discover  that 
her  conduct  in  all  relations  proceeds  from  purely  selfish  motives. 

'  It  is,  I  think,  not  improbable  that  the  impulse  to  kiss  the 
child,  which  is  certainly  strong  and  seems  to  be  innate,  is  a 
modification  of  the  maternal  impulse  to  lick  the  young  which  is 
a  feature  of  the  maternal  instinct  of  so  many  animal  species. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     75 

place  to,  or  is  complicated  by,  the  pugnacious  or  com- 
bative impulse  directed  against  the  source  of  the  obstruc- 
tion ;  and,  the  impulse  being  essentially  protective,  its  ob- 
struction provokes  anger  perhaps  more  readily  than  the 
obstruction  of  any  other.  In  almost  all  animals  that  dis- 
play it,  even  in  those  which  in  all  other  situations  are 
very  timid,  any  attempt  to  remove  the  young  from  the 
protecting  parent,  or  in  any  way  to  hurt  them,  provokes 
a  fierce  and  desperate  display  of  all  their  combative  re- 
sources. By  the  human  mother  the  same  prompt  yielding 
of  the  one  impulse  to  the  other  is  displayed  on  the  same 
plane  of  physical  protection,  but  also  on  the  higher  plane 
of  ideal  protection;  the  least  threat,  the  smallest  slight  or 
aspersion  {e.g.,  the  mere  speaking  of  the  baby  as  "it," 
instead  of  as  "he"  or  "she"),  the  mere  suggestion  that  it 
is  not  the  most  beautiful  object  in  the  world,  will  suffice 
to  provoke  a  quick  resentment. 

This  intimate  alliance  between  tender  emotion  and 
anger  is  of  great  importance  for  the  social  life  of  man, 
and  the  right  understanding  of  it  is  fundamental  for  a 
true  theory  of  the  moral  sentiments ;  for  the  anger 
evoked  in  this  way  is  the  germ  of  all  moral  indignation, 
and  on  moral  indignation  justice  and  the  greater  part  of 
public  law  are  in  the  main  founded.  Thus,  paradoxical 
as  it  may  seem,  beneficence  and  punishment  alike  have 
their  firmest  and  most  essential  root  in  the  parental  in- 
stinct. For  the  understanding  of  the  relation  of  this 
instinct  to  moral  indignation,  it  is  important  to  note  that 
the  object  which  is  the  primary  provocative  of  tender 
emotion  is,  not  the  child  itself,  but  the  child's  expression 
of  pain,  fear,  or  distress  of  any  kind,  especially  the  child's 
cry  of  distress ;  further,  that  this  instinctive  response  is 
provoked  by  the  cry,  not  only  of  one's  own  offspring,  but 
of  any  child.    Tender  emotion  and  the  protective  impulse 


76  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

are,  no  doubt,  evoked  more  readily  and  intensely  by  one's 
own  offspring,  because  about  them  a  strongly  organised 
and  complex  sentiment  grows  up.  But  the  distress  of 
any  child  will  evoke  this  response  in  a  very  intense  de- 
gree in  those  in  whom  the  instinct  is  strong.  There  are 
women — and  men  also,  though  fewer — who  cannot  sit 
still,  or  pursue  any  occupation,  within  sound  of  the  dis- 
tressed cry  of  a  child ;  if  circumstances  compel  them  to 
restrain  their  impulse  to  run  to  its  relief,  they  yet  cannot 
withdraw  their  attention  from  the  sound,  but  continue  to 
listen  in  painful  agitation. 

In  the  human  being,  just  as  is  the  case  in  some  degree 
with  all  the  instinctive  responses,  and  as  we  noticed  es- 
pecially in  the  case  of  disgust,  there  takes  place  a  vast 
extension  of  the  field  of  application  of  the  maternal  in- 
stinct. The  similarity  of  various  objects  to  the  primary 
or  natively  given  object,  similarities  which  in  many  cases 
can  only  be  operative  for  a  highly  developed  mind,  en- 
ables them  to  evoke  tender  emotion  and  its  protective  im- 
pulse directly — i.e.,  not  merely  by  way  of  associative  re- 
production of  the  natively  given  object.  In  this  way  the 
emotion  is  liable  to  be  evoked,  not  only  by  the  distress  of 
a  child,  but  by  the  mere  sight  or  thought  of  a  perfectly 
happy  child ;  for  its  feebleness,  its  delicacy,  its  obvious 
incapacity  to  supply  its  own  needs,  its  liability  to  a  thou- 
sand different  ills,  suggest  to  the  mind  its  need  of  protec- 
tion. By  a  further  extension  of  the  same  kind  the  emo- 
tion may  be  evoked  by  the  sight  of  any  very  young  ani- 
mal, especially  if  in  distress ;  Wordsworth's  poem  on  the 
pet  lamb  is  the  celebration  of  this  emotion  in  its  purest 
form ;  and  indeed  it  would  be  easy  to  wax  enthusiastic 
in  the  cause  of  an  instinct  that  is  the  source  of  the  only 
entirely  admirable,  satisfying,  and  perfect  human  rela- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     -jj 

tionship,  as  well  as  of  every  kind  of  purely  disinterested 
conduct.  In  a  similar  direct  fashion  the  distress  of  any 
adult  (towards  whom  we  harbour  no  hostile  sentiment) 
evokes  the  emotion ;  but  in  this  case  it  is  more  apt  to  be 
complicated  by  sympathetic  pain,  when  it  becomes  the 
painful,  tender  emotion  we  call  pity;  whereas  the  child, 
or  any  other  helpless  and  delicate  thing,  may  call  it  out  in 
the  pure  form  without  alloy  of  sympathetic  pain.  It  is 
amusing  to  observe  how,  in  those  women  in  whom  the 
instinct  is  strong,  it  is  apt  to  be  excited,  owing  to  the 
subtle  working  of  similarity,  by  any  and  every  object  that 
is  small  and  delicate  of  its  kind — a  very  small  cup,  or 
chair,  or  book,  or  what  not. 

Extension  takes  place  also  through  association  in  vir- 
tue of  contiguity;  the  objects  intimately  connected  with 
the  prime  object  of  the  emotion — such  objects  as  the 
clothes,  the  toys,  the  bed,  of  the  beloved  child — become 
capable  of  exciting  the  emotion  directly. 

But  the  former  mode  of  direct  extension  of  the  field 
of  application  is  in  this  case  the  more  important.  It  is 
in  virtue  of  such  extension  to  similars  that,  when  we 
see,  or  hear  of,  the  ill-treatment  of  any  weak,  defence- 
less creature  (especially,  of  course,  if  the  creature  be  a 
child)  tender  emotion  and  the  protective  impulse  are 
aroused  on  its  behalf,  but  are  apt  to  give  place  at  once 
to  the  anger  we  call  moral  indignation  against,  the  per- 
petrator of  the  cruelty;  and  in  bad  cases  we  are  quite 
prepared  to  tear  the  offender  limb  from  limb,  the  tardy 
process  of  the  law  with  its  mild  punishments  seeming 
utterly  inadequate  to  afford  vicarious  satisfaction  to  our 
anger.^ 

How  is  this  great  fact  of  wholly  disinterested  anger 

*  It  is  a  fair  question  whether,  among  those  nations  who  pride 
themselves  upon  having  attained  so  high  a  state  of  civilisation 


78  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

or  indignation  to  be  accounted  for,  if  not  in  the  way  here 
suggested?  The  question  is  an  important  one ;  it  suppHes 
a  touchstone  for  all  theories  of  the  moral  emotions  and 
sentiments.  For,  as  was  said  above,  this  disinterested  in- 
dignation is  the  ultimate  root  of  justice  and  of  public 
law ;  without  its  support  law  and  its  machinery  would  be 
most  inadequate  safeguards  of  personal  rights  and  liber- 
ties ;  and,  in  opposition  to  the  moral  indignation  of  a  ma- 
jority of  members  of  any  society,  laws  can  only  be  very 
imperfectly  enforced  by  the  strongest  despotism,  as  we 
see  in  Russia  at  the  present  time.  Those  who  deny  any 
truly  altruistic  motive  to  man  and  seek  to  reduce  apparent 
altruism  to  subtle  and  far-sighted  egoism,  must  simply 
deny  the  obvious  facts,  and  must  seek  some  far-fetched 
unreal  explanations  of  such  phenomena  as  the  anti-slav- 
ery and  Congo-reform  movements,  the  anti-vivisection 
crusade,  and  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty 
to  Children.  Let  us  examine  briefly  the  way  in  which 
Bain  sought  to  account  for  ostensibly  disinterested  emo- 
tion and  action.  As  we  have  seen  above,  he  regarded 
tender  emotion  as  wholly  self-seeking,  and,  like  many 
other  authors,  he  attributed  such  actions  as  we  are  con- 
sidering to  sympathy.  He  wrote  :  "From  a  region  of  the 
mind  quite  apart  from  the  tender  emotion  arises  the 
principle  of  sympathy,  or  the  prompting  to  take  on  the 
pleasures  and  pains  of  other  beings,  and  act  on  them  as 

ill  at  they  can  no  longer  inflict  capital  punishment,  the  greater 
clemency  of  the  law  should  not  be  attributed  to  a  relative 
deficiency  in  the  strength  of  the  parental  instinct  in  the  mass 
of  the  people,  and  to  a  consequent  relative  incapacity  for  moral 
indignation.  At  the  present  moment  the  moral  indignation  of  a 
large  section  of  the  French  people  is  clamouring  for  the  death 
of  a  wretch  who  has  been  convicted  of  cruelly  maltreating  a 
child  and  to  whom,  it  is  thoQght,  the  presidential  clemency  may 
be  extended. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     79 

if  they  were  our  own.  Instead  of  being  a  source  of  pleas- 
ure to  us,  the  primary  operation  of  sympathy  is  to  make 
us  surrender  pleasures  and  to  incur  pains.  This  is  a 
paradox  of  our  constitution  to  be  again  more  fully  con- 
sidered." ^ 

Here  he  has  clearly  committed  himself  to  a  position 
that  needs  much  explanation.  But,  when  we  seek  his 
fuller  consideration  of  this  paradox,  all  we  find  is  a  pas- 
sage of  a  few  lines  in  his  section  on  moral  disapprobation. 
This  passage  tells  us  that,  when  another's  conduct  in- 
spires a  feeling  of  disapprobation  as  violating  the  max- 
ims recognised  to  be  binding,  'Tt  is  to  be  supposed  that 
the  same  sense  of  duty  that  operates  upon  one's  own 
self,  and  stings  with  remorse  and  fear  in  case  of  dis- 
obedience, should  come  into  play  when  some  other  per- 
son is  the  guilty  agent.  The  feeling  that  rises  up  to- 
wards that  person  is  a  strong  feeling  of  displeasure  or 
dislike,  proportioned  to  the  strength  of  our  regard  to  the 
violated  duty.  There  arises  a  moral  resentment,  or  a  dis- 
position to  inflict  punishment  upon  the  offender."^  That 
is  to  say,  according  to  Bain,  the  source  of  all  disinterested 
f{'  moral  indignation  is  the  reflection,  "If  I  had  done  that, 
'  I  should  have  been  punished ;  therefore  he  must  be  pun- 
ished." Now,  this  attitude  is  not  uncommon,  especially 
in  the  nursery,  and  it  plays  some  small  part,  no  doubt, 
in  securing  equal  distribution  of  punishments;  but  it  is 
surely  wholly  inadequate  to  account  for  that  paradox  of 
our  constitution  previously  recognised  by  Bain.  In  order 
to  realise  how  far  from  the  truth  this  doctrine  is,  we  have 
only  to  consider  what  kinds  of  conduct  provoke  our  moral 
indignation  most  strongly.  If  we  hear  of  a  man  robbing 
a  bank,  holding  up  a  mail  train,  or  killing  another  in  fair 

"■Op.  cit.,  p.  83. 
'  Op.  cit.,  p.  291. 


8o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

fight,  we  may  agree  that  he  should  be  punished ;  for  we 
recognise  intellectually  that  the  interests  of  society  de- 
mand that  such  things  shall  not  be  done  too  frequently, 
and  we  ourselves  might  shrink  from  similar  conduct ;  but 
our  feeling  towards  the  criminal  may  be  one  of  pity,  or 
perhaps  merely  one  of  amusement  dashed  with  admira- 
tion for  his  audacity  and  skill.  But  let  the  act  be  one 
inflicting  pain  on  a  helpless  creature — an  act  of  cruelty 
to  a  horse,  a  dog,  or,  above  all,  to  a  child — and  our  moral 
indignation  blazes  out,  even  though  the  act  be  one  for 
which  the  law  prescribes  no  punishment.  Bain's  ex- 
planation of  his  "paradox"  of  sympathy  is  then  utterly 
inadequate,  and  a  closer  examination  of  his  statement  of 
the  principle  of  sympathy  shows  that  it  is  false,  and  that 
any  plausibility  it  may  seem  to  possess  depends  upon  the 
vague  and  rhetorical  language  in  which  it  is  made.  His 
statement  is  that  sympathy  is  the  prompting  to  take  on 
the  pains  and  pleasures  of  another  being,  and  to  en- 
deavour to  abolish  that  other's  pain  and  to  prolong  his 
pleasure.  But,  if  we  use  more  accurate  language,  we 
shall  have  to  say  that  the  sympathetic  pain  or  pleasure 
we  experience  is  immediately  evoked  in  us  by  the  spec- 
tacle of  pain  or  of  pleasure,  and  that  we  then  act  on  it 
because  it  is  our  own  pain  or  pleasure ;  and  the  action 
we  take  (so  long  as  no  other  principle  is  at  work)  is  di- 
rected to  cut  short  our  own  pain  and  to  prolong  our 
own  pleasure,  quite  regardless  of  the  feelings  of  the  other 
person.  Now,  the  easiest  and  quickest  way  of  cutting 
short  sympathetically  induced  pain  is  to  turn  our  eyes  and 
our  thoughts  away  from  the  suffering  creature ;  and  this 
is  the  way  invariably  followed  by  all  sensitive  natures 
in  which  the  tender  emotion  and  its  protective  impulse 
are  weak.  They  pass  by  the  sick  and  suffering  with 
averted  gaze,  and  resolutely  banish  all  thoughts  of  them, 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     8i 

surrounding  themselves  as  far  as  possible  with  gay  and 
cheerful  faces.  No  doubt  the  spectacle  of  the  poor  man 
who  fell  among  thieves  was  just  as  distressing  to  the 
priest  and  the  Levite,  who  passed  by  on  the  other  side, 
as  to  the  good  Samaritan  who  tenderly  cared  for  him. 
They  may  well  have  been  exquisitely  sensitive  souls, 
who  would  have  fainted  away  if  they  had  been  com- 
pelled to  gaze  upon  his  wounds.  The  great  difference 
between  them  and  the  Samaritan  was  that  in  him  the 
tender  emotion  and  its  impulse  were  evoked,  and  that 
this  impulse  overcame,  or  prevented,  the  aversion  natur- 
ally induced  by  the  painful  and,  perhaps,  disgusting 
spectacle.^ 

Our  susceptibiHty  to  sympathetically  induced  pain  or 
pleasure,  operating  alone,  simply  inclines  us,  then,  to 
avoid  the  neighbourhood  of  the  distressed  and  to  seek  the 
company  of  the  cheerful;  but  tender  emotion  draws  us 
near  to  the  suffering  and  the  sad,  seeking  to  alleviate 
their  distress.  It  is  to  be  noted  also  that  the  intensity 
of  the  emotion  and  the  strength  of  its  impulse  to  cherish 
and  protect,  and  also  the  violence  of  the  anger  we  feel 
against  him  who  inflicts  pain  on  any  weak  and  defence- 
less creature — all  these  bear  no  constant  relation  to  the 
intensity  of  our  sympathetically  induced  pain.  There 
are  natures  so  strong  and  so  happily  constituted  that  they 
hardly  know  pain ;  yet  they  may  be  very  tender-hearted 
and  easily  roused  to  anger  by  the  spectacle  of  cruelty. 
Again,  the  mere  threat  of  injury  to  a  feeble  creature 
may  provoke  an  instantaneous  anger;  and  it  would  be 
absurd  to  suppose  that  in  such  a  case  one  first  pictures 
the  suffering  of  the  creature  that  would  result  if  the 
threat  were  executed,  then  sympathetically  experiences 

*  For  fuller  discussion  of  sympathy  see  Chapters  IV.  and  VI. 


82  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  pain,  and  then,  putting  oneself  in  the  place  of  the 
prospectively  injured,  goes  on  to  feel  anger  against  him 
who  threatens.  The  response  is  as  direct  and  in- 
stantaneous as  the  mother's  emotion  at  the  cry  of  her 
child  or  her  impulse  to  fly  to  its  defence;  and  it  is 
essentially  the  same  process. 

.  In  no  other  way  than  that  here  proposed  is  it  possible 
to  account  for  disinterested  beneficence  and  moral  in- 
dignation. If  this  view  is  rejected,  they  remain  a  para- 
dox and  a  miracle — tendencies,  mysteriously  implanted 
in  the  human  breast,  that  have  no  history  in  the  evolu- 
tionary process,  no  analogy  and  no  intelligible  connection 
with,  no  resemblance  to,  any  of  the  other  features  of  our 
mental  constitution. 

The  importance  of  establishing  the  place  of  tender 
emotion  among  the  primary  emotions  necessitates  in  this 
place  a  brief  criticism  of  Mr.  Shand's  treatment  of  it, 
although  this  criticism  may  be  more  easily  understood 
after  reading  Chapters  V.  and  VI.,  in  which  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  sentiments  is  discussed. 

According  to  Mr.  Shand,^  tender  emotion  is  always 
complex,  and  into  its  composition  there  enter  always  both 
joy  and  sorrow.  He  arrives  at  this  view  in  the  following 
way:  Accepting  the  traditional  view  that  joy  and  sorrow 
are  primary  emotions,  he  says  that  joy  is  a  diffusive  enipr. 
tion  that  has  no  specific  tendency  (for  he  has  not  ac- 
cepted the  guiding  principle  followed  in  these  pages, 
namely,  that  each  primary  emotion  accompanies  the  ex- 
citement of  an  instinctive  disposition  of  specific  ten- 
dency) ;  and  sorrow,  he  says,  has  two  impulses,  namely, 
to  cling  to  its  object  and  to  restore  it,  to  repair  the  injury 
done  to  it  that  is  the  cause  of  the  sorrow.    He  then  takes 

*  Professor   Stout's   "Groundwork  of  Psychology,"  chap.  xvi. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     83 

pity  as  the  simplest  type  of  tender  emotion,  and  finds  that 
it  has  the  fundamental  impulses  of  sorrow,  to  restore 
and  to  cling  to  its  object;  but  pity  is  not  pure  sorrow, 
because  it  has  an  element  of  sweetness ;  which  element 
he  identifies  with  joy.  Hence  pity,  the  simplest  variety 
of  tender  emotion,  is,  he  says,  a  fusion  of  joy  and  sor- 
row. 

Mr.  Shand  does  not  attempt  to  account  for  sorrow,  or 
to  trace  its  history  in  the  race,  or  to  show  how  it  gets 
its  disinterested  impulse  to  restore  and  do  good  to  its  ob- 
ject. And  this  is  the  all-important  question,  for  this 
impulse  of  tender  emotion  is,  as  has  been  said,  the  source 
of  all  altruistic  conduct.  He  simply  begs  the  question 
in  assuming  sorrow  to  be  a  primary  emotion  having  this 
impulse.  Further,  in  the  course  of  his  discussion  Shand 
recognises  the  existence  of  a  kind  of  sorrow  or  grief 
that  has  no  impulse  to  restore  its  object — the  hard,  bit- 
ter variety  of  grief ;  and  in  doing  that  he  implicitly  ad- 
mits that  sorrow  is  complex  and  derived  from  simpler 
elements.  He  makes  also  this  significant  admission: 
"The  tenderness  of  pity  seems  to  come  from  the  ideas  and 
impulses  that  go  out  to  relieve  sufifering."  Now,  that  is 
just  the  point  I  wish  to  insist  upon — that  there  is  in  pity 
as  one  element  this  impulse  to  cherish  and  protect,  with 
its  accompanying  tender  emotion ;  and  that  this  is  present 
also  in  sorrow  proper,  but  that  it  is  not  in  itself  painful — 
as  sorrow  is — and  therefore  is  not  sorrow,  but  is  one  of 
the  primary  elements  of  which  sorrowful  emotion  is  com- 
pounded. 

According  to  the  view  here  adopted,  the  element  of 
pain  in  pity  is  sympathetically  induced  pain,^  and  the 
clement  of  sweetness  is  the  pleasure  that  attends  the  sat- 

'See  Chapter  IV. 


-1 


84  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

isfaction  of  the  impulse  of  the  tender  emotion.  That 
this  view  is  truer  than  the  other  is,  I  think,  shown  by 
the  fact  that  pity  may  be  wholly  devoid  of  this  element 
of  sweetness  without  losing  its  essential  character — 
namely,  in  the  case  of  pity  evoked  by  some  terrible  suf- 
fering that  we  are  powerless  to  relieve ;  in  this  case  the 
pain  of  the  obstructed  tender  impulse  is  added  to  the 
sympathetic  pain,  and  our  pity  is  wholly  painful.      ' 

Another  good  reason  for  refusing  to  regard  sorrow  as 
one  of  the  primary  emiOtions  is  the  fact  that  sorrowful 
emotion  of  every  kind  presupposes  the  existence  of  an 
organised  sentiment,  and  is,  in  fact,  the  tender  emotion 
developed  within  the  sentiment  of  love  and  rendered 
painful  either  by  sympathetically  induced  pain — as  in 
the  case  of  injury  to  the  beloved  object,  or  by  the 
baffling  of  its  impulse — as  in  the  case  of  the  loss  of  that 
object.  If,  as  seems  to  me  indisputable,  sorrow  pre- 
supposes the  organised  sentiment  of  love,  it  clearly  can- 
not be  regarded  as  a  primary  emotion. 

Some  other  Instincts  of  less  zvell-deiined  Emotional 
Tendency 

The  seven  instincts  we  have  now  reviewed  are  those 
whose  excitement  yields  the  most  definite  of  the  primary 
emotions ;  from  these  seven  primary  emotions  together 
with  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain  (and  perhaps  also 
feelings  of  excitement  and  of  depression)  are  com- 
pounded all,  or  almost  all,  the  affective  states  that  are 
popularly  recognised  as  emotions,  and  for  which  com- 
mon speech  has  definite  names.  But  there  are  other 
human  instincts  which,  though  some  of  them  play  but 
a  minor  part  in  the  genesis  of  the  emotions,  have  im- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     85 

pulses  that  are  of  great  importance  for  social  life ;  they 
must  therefore  be  mentioned. 

Of  these  by  far  the  most  important  is  the  sexual  in- 
stinct or  instinct  of  reproduction.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
say  anything  of  the  great  strength  of  its  impulse  or  of 
the  violence  of  the  emotional  excitement  that  accom- 
panies its  exercise.  One  point  of  interest  is  its  intimate 
connection  with  the  parental  instinct.  There  can,  I 
think,  be  little  doubt  that  this  connection  is  an  innate 
one,  and  that  in  all  (save  debased)  natures  it  secures 
that  the  object  of  the  sexual  impulse  shall  become  also 
the  object  in  some  degree  of  tender  emotion.^  The 
biological  utility  of  an  innate  connection  of  this  kind  is 
obvious.  It  would  prepare  the  way  for  that  co-opera- 
tion between  the  male  and  female  in  which,  even  among 
the  animals,  a  lifelong  fidelity  and  mutual  tenderness  is 
often  touchingly  displayed. 

This  instinct,  more  than  any  other,  is  apt  in  mankind 
to  lend  the  immense  energy  of  its  impulse  to  the  senti- 
ments and  complex  impulses  into  which  it  enters,  while 
its  specific  character  remains  submerged  and  uncon- 
scious. It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  on  this  feature,  since 
it  has  been  dealt  with  exhaustively  in  many  thousands 
of  novels.  From  the  point  of  view  of  this  section 
the  chief  importance  of  this  instinct  is  that  it  illus- 
trates, in  a  manner  that  must  convince  the  most  obtuse, 
the  continuity  and  the  essential  similarity  of  nature 
and  function  between  the  human  and  the  animal  in- 
stincts. 

In  connection  with  the  instinct  of  reproduction  a  few 
uords  must  be  said  about  sexual  jealousy  and  female 

*  In    so    far,    of    course,    as    the    impulse    is    not    completely 
♦hwar^sd. 


86  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

coyness.  These  are  regarded  by  some  authors  as  special 
instincts,  but  perhaps  without  sufficiently  good  grounds. 
Jealousy  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word  is  a  complex  emo- 
tion that  presupposes  an  organised  sentiment,  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  regard  the  hostile  behaviour  of  the  male 
animal  in  the  presence  of  rivals  as  necessarily  implying 
any  such  complex  emotion  or  sentiment.  The  assump- 
tion of  a  specially  intimate  innate  connection  between  the 
instincts  of  reproduction  and  of  pugnacity  will  account 
for  the  fact  that  the  anger  of  the  male,  both  in  the  human 
and  in  most  animal  species,  is  so  readily  aroused  in  an 
intense  degree  by  any  threat  of  opposition  to  the  opera- 
tion of  the  sexual  impulse  ;  and  perhaps  the  great  strength 
of  the  sexual  impulse  sufficiently  accounts  for  it. 

The  coyness  of  the  female  in  the  presence  of  the  male 
may  be  accounted  for  in  similar  fashion  by  the  assump- 
tion that  in  the  female  the  instinct  of  reproduction  has 
specially  intimate  innate  relations  to  the  instincts  of  self- 
display  and  self-abasement,  so  that  the  presence  of  the 
male  excites  these  as  'well  as  the  former  instinct. 

The  desire  for  food  that  we  experience  when  hungry, 
with  the  impulse  to  seize  it,  to  carry  it  to  the  mouth,  to 
chew  it  and  swallow  it,  must,  I  think,  be  regarded  as 
rooted  in  a  true  instinct.  In  many  of  the  animals  the 
movements  of  feeding  exhibit  all  the  marks  of  truly  in- 
stinctive behaviour.  But  in  ourselves  the  instinct  becomes 
at  an  early  age  so  greatly  modified  through  experience, 
on  both  its  receptive  and  its  executive  sides,  that  little, 
save  the  strong  impulse,  remains  to  mark  the  instinctive 
nature  of  the  process  of  feeding. 
{  The  gregarious  instinct  is  one  of  the  human  instincts 
of  greatest  social  importance,  for  it  has  played  a  great 
part  in  moulding  societary  forms.  The  affective  aspect 
of  the  operation  of  this  instinct  is  not  sufficiently  in- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     87 

tense  or  specific  to  b.ave  been  given  a  name.  The  in- 
stinct is  displayed  by  many  species  of  animals,  even 
by  some  very  lo-w  in  the  scale  of  mental  capacity.  Its 
operation  in  its  simplest  form  implies  none  of  the  higher 
qualities  of  mind,  neither  sympathy  nor  capacity  for 
mutual  aid.  Mr.  Francis  Galton  has  given  the  classical 
description  of  the  operation  of  the  crude  instinct.  De- 
scribing the  South  African  ox  in  Damaraland,^  he  says 
he  displays  no  affection  for  his  fellows,  and  hardly  seems 
to  notice  their  existence,  so  long  as  he  is  among  them; 
but,  if  he  becomes  separated  from  the  herd,  he  displays 
an  extreme  distress  that  will  not  let  him  rest  until  he 
succeeds  in  rejoining  it,  when  he  hastens  to  bury  him- 
self in  the  midst  of  it,  seeking  the  closest  possible  con- 
tact with  the  bodies  of  his  fellows.  There  we  see  the 
working  of  the  gregarious  instinct  in  all  its  simplicity,  a 
mere  uneasiness  in  isolation  and  satisfaction  in  being  one 
of  a  herd.  Its  utility  to  animals  liable  to  the  attacks  of 
beasts  of  prey  is  obvious. 

The  instinct  is  commonly  strongly  confirmed  by  habit; 
the  individual  is  born  into  a  society  of  some  sort  and 
grows  up  in  it,  and  the  being  wath  others  and  doing  as 
they  do  becomes  a  habit  deeply  rooted  in  the  instinct.  It 
would  seem  to  be  a  general  rule,  the  explanation  of 
which  is  to  be  found  in  the  principle  of  sympathetic  emo- 
tion to  be  considered  later,  that  the  more  numerous  the 
herd  or  crowd  or  society  in  which  the  individual  finds 
himself  the  more  complete  is  the  satisfaction  of  this  im- 
pulse. It  is  probably  owing  to  this  peculiarity  of  the  in- 
stinct that  gregarious  animals  of  so  many  species  are 
found  at  times  in  aggregations  far  larger  than  are  nec- 
essary for  mutual  protection  or  for  the  securing  of  any 
other  advantage.     Travellers  on  the  prairies  of  North 

^  "Inquiries  into   Human   Faculty,"  p.   'jz. 


88  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

America  in  the  early  days  of  exploration  have  told  how 
the  bison  might  sometimes  be  seen  in  an  immense  herd 
that  blackened  the  surface  of  the  plain  for  many  miles 
in  all  directions.  In  a  similar  way  some  kinds  of  deer 
and  of  birds  gather  together  and  move  from  place  to 
place  in  vast  aggregations. 

Although  opinions  differ  widely  as  to  the  form  of 
primitive  human  society,  some  inclining  to  the  view  that 
it  was  a  large  promiscuous  horde,  others,  with  more 
probability,  regarding  it  as  a  comparatively  small  group 
of  near  blood  relatives,  almost  all  anthropologists  agree 
that  primitive  man  was  to  some  extent  gregarious  in  his 
habits ;  and  the  strength  of  the  instinct  as  it  still  exists  in 
civilised  men  lends  support  to  this  view. 

The  gregarious  instinct  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  that 
the  human  instincts  are  liable  to  a  morbid  hypertrophy 
under  which  their  emotions  and  impulses  are  revealed 
with  exaggerated  intensity.  The  condition  known  to 
alienists  as  agoraphobia  seems  to  result  from  the  morbidly 
intense  working  of  this  instinct — the  patient  will  not  re- 
main alone,  will  not  cross  a  wide  empty  space,  and  seeks 
always  to  be  surrounded  by  other  human  beings.  But  of 
the  normal  man  also  it  is  true  that,  as  Professor  James 
says :  "To  be  alone  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  evils  for 
him.  Solitary  confinement  is  by  many  regarded  as  a 
mode  of  torture  too  cruel  and  unnatural  for  civilised 
countries  to  adopt.  To  one  long  pent  up  on  a  desert 
island  the  sight  of  a  human  footprint  or  a  human  form 
in  the  distance  would  be  the  most  tumultuously  exciting 
of  experiences."^ 

In  civilised  communities  we  may  see  evidence  of  the 
operation  of  this  instinct  on  every  hand.  For  all  but  a 
few  exceptional,  and  generally  highly  cultivated,  persons 

*  "Principles  of  Psychology." 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN     89 

the  one  essential  condition  of  recreation  is  the  being  one 
of  a  crowd.  The  normal  daily  recreation  of  the  popula- 
tion of  our  towns  is  to  go  out  in  the  evening  and  to  walk 
up  and  down  the  streets  in  which  the  throng  is  densest — 
the  Strand,  Oxford  Street,  or  the  Old  Kent  Road;  and 
the  smallest  occasion — a  foreign  prince  driving  to  a  rail- 
way-station or  a  Lord  Mayor's  Show — will  line  the 
streets  for  hours  with  many  thousands  whose  interest 
in  the  prince  or  the  show  alone  would  hardly  lead  them 
to  take  a  dozen  steps  out  of  their  way.  On  their  few 
short  holidays  the  working  classes  rush  together  from 
town  and  country  alike  to  those  resorts  in  which  they 
are  assured  of  the  presence  of  a  large  mass  of  their  fel- 
lows. It  is  the  same  instinct  working  on  a  slightly  higher 
plane  that  brings  tens  of  thousands  to  the  cricket  and 
football  grounds  on  half-holidays.  Crowds  of  this  sort? 
exert  a  greater  fascination  and  afford  a  more  complete 
satisfaction  to  the  gregarious  instinct  than  the  mere  aim- 
less aggregations  of  the  streets,  because  all  their  mem- 
bers are  simultaneously  concerned  with  the  same  objects, 
all  are  moved  by  the  same  emotions,  all  shout  and  applaud 
together.  It  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  it  is  merely 
the  individuals'  interest  in  the  game  that  brings  these 
huge  crowds  together.  What  proportion  of  the  ten 
thousand  witnesses  of  a  football  match  would  stand  for 
an  hour  or  more  in  the  wind  and  rain,  if  each  man  were 
isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  crowd  and  saw  only  the 
players  ? 

Even  cultured  minds  are  not  immune  to  the  fascination 
of  the  herd.  Who  has  not  felt  it  as  he  has  stood  at  the 
Mansion  House  crossing  or  walked  down  Cheapside? 
How  few  prefer  at  nightfall  the  lonely  Thames  Em- 
bankment, full  of  mysterious  poetry  as  the  barges  sweep 
slowly  onward  with  the  flood-tide,  to  the  garish  crowded 


90  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Strand  a  hundred  yards  away!  We  cultivated  persons 
usually  say  to  ourselves,  when  we  yield  to  this  fascination, 
that  we  are  taking  an  intelligent  interest  in  the  life  of 
the  people.  But  such  intellectual  interest  plays  but  a 
small  part,  and  beneath  works  the  powerful  impulse  of 
this  ancient  instinct. 

The  possession  of  this  instinct,  even  in  great  strength, 
does  not  necessarily  imply  sociability  of  temperament. 
Many  a  man  leads  in  London  a  most  solitary,  unsociable 
life,  who  yet  would  find  it  hard  to  live  far  away  from 
the  thronged  city.  Such  men  are  like  Mr.  Galton's  oxen, 
unsociable  but  gregarious;  and  they  illustrate  the  fact 
that  sociability,  although  it  has  the  gregarious  instinct 
at  its  foundation,  is  a  more  complex,  more  highly  de- 
veloped, tendency.  As  an  element  of  this  more  complex 
tendency  to  sociability,  the  instinct  largely  determines 
the  forms  of  the  recreations  of  even  the  cultured  classes, 
and  is  the  root  of  no  small  part  of  the  pleasure  we  find 
in  attendance  at  the  theatre,  at  concerts,  lectures,  and  all 
such  entertainments.  How  much  more  satisfying  is  a 
good  play  if  one  sits  in  a  well-filled  theatre  than  if  half 
the  seats  are  empty ;  especially  if  the  house  is  unanimous 
and  loud  in  the  expression  of  its  feelings !  But  this 
instinct  has  in  all  ages  produced  more  important  social 
effects  that  must  be  considered  in  a  later  chapter. 
\  Two  other  instincts  of  considerable  social  importance 
/demand  a  brief  mention.  Th^Jmpulse  to  collect  and 
/  hoard  vaxipus  objects  is  displayed  in  one  way  of~ahother 
by  almost  all  human  beings,  and  seems  to  be  due  to  a  true 
instinct;  it  is  manifested  by  many  animals  in  the  blind, 
unintelligent  manner  that  is  characteristic  of  crude  in- 
stinct. And,  like  other  instinctive  impulses  of  man,  it  is 
liable  to  become  morbidly  exaggerated,  when  it  appears, 
in  a  mild  form,  as  the  collecting  mania  and,  in  greater 


^ 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN      91 

excess,  as  miserliness  and  kleptomania.  Like  other  in- 
stincts, it  ripens  naturally  and  comes  into  play  inde- 
pendently of  all  training.  Statistical  inquiry  among 
large  numbers  of  children  has  shown  that  very  few  at- 
tain adult  life  without  having  made  a  collection  of  ob- 
jects of  one  kind  or  another,  usually  without  any  definite 
purpose ;  such  collecting  is  no  doubt  primarily  due  to  the 
ripening  of  ^ri_m.^tvncX  of  acquisition.  1 

We  seem  to  be  justified  in  assuming  in  man  an^w- 
stinct_of_  cn^s^^'>"'^'^'^'"  The  playful  activities  of  children 
seem  to  be  in  part  determined  by  its  impulse ;  and  in  most 
civilised  adults  it  still  survives,  though  but  little  scope 
is  allowed  it  by  the  circumstances  of  the  majority.  For 
most  of  us  the  satisfaction  of  having  actually  made 
something  is  very  real,  quite  apart  from  the  value  or 
usefulness  of  the  thing  made.  And  the  simple  desire  to 
make  something,  rooted  in  this  instinct,  is  probably  a 
contributing  motive  to  all  human  constructions  from  a 
mud-pie  to  a  metaphysical  system  or  a  code  of  laws. 

The  instincts  enumerated  above,  together  with  a  num- 
ber of  minor  instincts,  such  as  those  that  prompt  to 
crawling  and  walking,  are,  I  think,  all  that  we  can  recog- 
nise with  certainty  in  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind. 
Lightly  to  postulate  an  indefinite  number  and  variety  of 
human  instincts  is  a  cheap  and  easy  way  to  solve  psy- 
chological problems,  and  is  an  error  hardly  less  serious 
and  less  common  than  the  opposite  error  of  ignoring  all 
the  instincts.  How  often  do  we  not  hear  of  the  religious 
instinct!  Renan  asserted  that  the  religious  instinct  is 
as  natural  to  man  as  the  nest-building  instinct  is  to 
birds,  and  many  authors  have  written  of  it  as  one  of  the 
fundamental  attributes  of  the  human  mind.^     But,   if 

*  Cf.  p.  309. 


92  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

we  accept  the  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  man  from 
animal  forms,  we  are  compelled  to  seek  the  origin  of 
religious  emotions  and  impulses  in  instincts  that  are  not 
specifically  religious.  And  consideration  of  the  condi- 
tions, manifestations,  and  tendencies  of  religious  emo- 
tions must  lead  to  the  same  search.'  For  it  is  clear  that 
religious  emotion  is  not  a  simple  and  specific  variety, 
such  as  could  be  conditioned  by  any  one  instinct;  it 'is 
rather  a  very  complex  and  diversified  product  of  the  co- 
operation of  several  instincts,  which  bring  forth  very 
heterogeneous  manifestations,  differing  from  one  another 
as  widely  as  light  from  darkness,  according  to  the  de- 
gree and  kind  of  guidance  afforded  by  imagination  and 
reason. 

Much  has  been  written  in  recent  years  of  instincts  of 
imitation,  of  sympathy,  and  of  play,  and  the  postulation 
of  these  instincts  seems  to  have  been  allowed  to  pass 
without  challenge.  Yet,  as  I  shall  show  in  the  following 
section,  there  is  no  sufficient  justification  for  it;  for  all 
the  behaviour  attributed  to  these  three  supposed  instincts 
may  be  otherwise  accounted  for. 

Professor  James  admits  an  instinct  of  emulation  or 
rivalry,  but  the  propriety  of  this  admission  is  to  my  mind 
questionable.  It  is  possible  that  all  the  behaviour  which 
is  attributed  to  this  instinct  may  be  accounted  for  as 
proceeding  from  the  instincts  of  pugnacity  and  of  self- 
display  or  self-assertion.  It  would,  I  think,  be  difficult 
to  make  out  any  good  case  for  the  existence  of  such  an 
instinct  in  the  animal  world.  But  a  suggestion  as  to  the 
peculiar  position  and  origin  of  a  human  instinct  of 
emulation  will  be  made  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOME  GENERAL  OR  NON-SPECIFIC  INNATE  TENDENCIES 

IN  this  chapter  we  have  to  consider  certain  innate 
tendencies  of  the  human  mind  of  great  importance  for 
social  life  which  are  sometimes  ascribed  to  special  in- 
stincts, but  which  are  more  properly  classed  apart  from 
the  instinctive  tendencies.  For  we  have  seen  that  an  in-  \ 
stinct,  no  matter  how  profoundly  modified  it  may  be  in 
the  developed  human  mind  as  regards  the  conditions  of 
its  excitement  and  the  actions  in  which  it  manifests  it- 
self, always  retains  unchanged  its  essential  and  per- 
manent nucleus ;  this  nucleus  is  the  central  part  of  the 
innate  disposition,  the  excitement  of  which  determines  an 
affective  state  or  emotion  of  specific  quality  and  a  native 
impulse  towards  some  specific  end.  And  the  tendencies 
to  be  considered  in  this  chapter  have  no  such  specific 
characters,  but  are  rather  of  a  many-sided  and  general 
nature.  Consider,  for  example,  the  tendency  to  imitate — 
the  modes  of  action  in  which  this  tendency  expresses  it- 
self and  the  accompanying  subjective  states  are  as  vari- 
ous as  the  things  or  actions  that  can  be  imitated. 

Sympathy  or  the  Sympathetic  Induction  of  the  Emotions 

"s/ 

The  three  most  important  of  these  pseudo^instintts,    . 
as  they  might  be  called,  are  suggestion,  imitation,  and 
sympathy.      They    are    closely    allied"  as    regards    their 
effects,  for  in  each  case  the  process  in  which  the  ten- 

93 


94  SOCIAL  PSYCH®LOGY 

dency  manifests  itself  involves  an  interaction  between 
at  least  two  individuals,  one  of  whom  is  the  agent, 
while  the  other  is  the  person  acted  upon  or  patient ;  and 
in  each  case  the  result  of  the  process  is  some  degree 
of  assimilation  of  the  actions  and  mental  state  of  the 
patient  to  those  of  the  agent.  Ttrey  are  three~  forms  «f- 
mental"  interaction  of  fundamental  importance  for  all 
-social  4tfe,  both  of  men  and  animals.  These  processes 
of  mental  interaction,  of  impression  and  reception,  may 
involve  chiefly  the  cognitive  aspect  of  mental  process,  or 
its  affective  or  its  conative  aspect.  In  the  first  case, 
when  some  presentation,  idea,  or  belief  of  the  agent  di- 
rectly induces  a  similar  presentation,  idea,  or  belief  in 
the  patient,  the  process  is  called  one  of  suggestion ; 
when  an  affective  or  emotional  excitement  of  the  agent 
induces  a  similar  affective  excitement  in  the  patient,  the 
process  is  one  of  sympathy  or  sympathetic  induction  of 
emotion  or  feeling;  when  the  most  prominent  result  of 
the  process  of  interaction  is  the  assimilation  of  the  bodily 
movements  of  the  patient  to  those  of  the  agent,  we  speak 
of  imitation. 

Now,  M.  Tarde^  and  Professor  Baldwin^  have  singled 
out  imitation  as  the  all-important  social  procecs,  and 
Baldwin,  like  most  contemporary  writers,  attributes  it 
to  an  instinct  of  imitation.  But  careful  consideration  of 
the  nature  of  imitative  actions  shows  that  they  are  of 
many  kinds,  that  they  issue  from  mental  processes  of  a 
number  of  different  types,  and  that  none  are  attributable 
to  a  specific  instinct  of  imitation,  while  many  are  due  to 
sympathy  and  others  to  suggestion.  We  must  therefore 
first  consider  sympathy  and  suggestion,  and,  after  de- 

*  "Les  Lois  de  I'lmitation."     Paris,  1904. 

'"Mental  Development,"  and  "Social  and  Ethical  Interpre- 
tations." 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES    95 

fining  them  as  precisely  as  possible,  go  on  to  consider  the 
varieties  of  imitative  action. 

Sympathy  is  by  some  authors  ascribed  to  a  special  in- 
stinct of  sympathy,  and  even  Professor  James  has  been 
misled  by  the  confused  usage  of  common  speech  and  has 
said  "sympathy  is  an  emotion."^  But  the  principles  main- 
tained in  the  foregoing  chapter  will  not  allow  us  to  ac- 
cept either  of  these  views.  The  word  "sympathy,"  as 
popularly  used,  generally  implies  a  tender  regard  for  the 
person  with  whom  we  are  said  to  sympathise.  But 
such  sympathy  is  only  one  special  and  complex  form  of 
sympathetic  emotion,  in  the  strict  and  more  general  sense 
of  the  words.  The  fundamental  and  primitive  form  o£ 
sympathy  is  exactly  what  the  word  implies,  a  suffering 
with,  the  experiencing  of  any  feeling  or  emotion  when  \^ 
and  because  we  observe  in  other  persons  or  creatures  the  \ 
expression  of  that  feeling  or  emotion.^ 

Sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  is  displayed  in  the 
simplest  and  most  unmistakable  fashion  by  many,  prob- 
ably by  all,  of  the  gregarious  animals;  and  it  is  easy  tc 
understand  how  greatly  it  aids  them  in  their  struggle  for 
existence.  One  of  the  clearest  and  commonest  examples 
is  the  spread  of  fear  and  its  flight-impulse  among  the 
members  of  a  flock  or  herd.  Many  gregarious  animals 
utter  when  startled  a  characteristic  cry  of  fear;  when 
this  cry  is  emitted  by  one  member  of  a  flock  or  herd,  it 
immediately  excites  the  flight-impulse  in  all  of  its  fel- 
lows who  are  within  hearing  of  it ;  the  whole  herd,  flock, 
or  covey  takes  to  flight  like  one  individual.    Or  again,  one 

*  "Op.  cit.,  ii.,  p.  410. 

*  This  truth  has  been  clearly  expressed  by  Herbert  Spencer 
("Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  563),  and  Bain  recog- 
nised it,  although,  as  we  have  seen,  he  failed  to  hold  it  consist- 
ently. 


96  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

of  a  pack  of  gregarious  hunting  animals,  dogs  or  wolves, 
comes  upon  a  fresh  trail,  sights  the  prey,  and  pursues  it, 
uttering  a  characteristic  yelp  that  excites  the  instinct  of 
pursuit  in  all  his  fellows  and  brings  them  yelping  behind 
him.  Or  two  dogs  begin  to  growl  or  fight,  and  at  once  all 
the  dogs  within  sound  and  sight  stiffen  themselves  and 
show  every  symptom  of  anger.  Or  one  beast  in  a  herd 
stands  arrested,  gazing  in  curiosity  on  some  unfamiliar 
object,  and  presently  his  fellows  also,  to  whom  the  ob- 
ject may  be  invisible,  display  curiosity  and  come  up  to 
join  in  the  examination  of  the  object.  In  all  these  cases 
we  observe  only  that  the  behaviour  of  one  animal,  upon 
the  excitement  of  an  instinct,  immediately  evokes  similar 
behaviour  in  those  of  his  fellows  who  perceive  his  ex- 
pressions of  excitement.  But  we  can  hardly  doubt  that 
in  each  case  the  instinctive  behaviour  is  accompanied  by 
the  appropriate  emotion  and  felt  impulse. 

Sympathy  of  this  crude  kind  is  the  cement  that  binds 
animal  societies  together,  renders  the  actions  of  all  mem- 
bers of  a  group  harmonious,  and  allows  them  to  reap 
some  of  the  prime  advantages  of  social  life  in  spite  of 
lack  of  intelligence. 

How  comes  it  that  the  instinctive  behaviour  of  one 
animal  directly  excites  similar  behaviour  on  the  part  of 
his  fellows?  No  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question 
seems  to  have  been  hitherto  proposed,  although  this  kind 
of  behaviour  has  been  described  and  discussed  often 
enough.  Not  many  years  ago  it  would  have  seemed  suf- 
ficient to  answer.  It  is  due  to  instinct.  But  that  answer 
will  hardly  satisfy  us  to-day.  I  think  the  facts  compel 
us  to  assume  that  in  the  gregarious  animals  each  of  the 
principal  instincts  has  a  special  perceptual  inlet  (or 
recipient  afferent  part)  that  is  adapted  to  receive  and 
to  elaborate  the  sense-impressions  made  by  the  expres- 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES    97 

sions  of  the  same  instinct  in  other  animals  of  the  same 
species — that,  e.  g.,  the  fear-instinct  has,  besides  others,  a 
special  perceptual  inlet  that  renders  it  excitable  by  the 
sound  of  the  cry  of  fear,  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  a  per- 
ceptual inlet  that  renders  it  excitable  by  the  sound  of  the 
roar  of  anger. 

Human  sympathy  has  its  roots  in  similar  specialisations 
of  the  instinctive  dispositions  on  their  afferent  sides.  In 
early  childhood  sympathetic  emotion  is  almost  wholly  of 
this  simple  kind;  and  all  through  Hfe  most  of  us  con- 
tinue to  respond  in  this  direct  fashion  to  the  expres- 
sions of  the  feelings  and  emotions  of  our  fellow-men. 
This  sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  and  feeling  may 
be  observed  in  children  at  an  age  at  which  they  cannot 
be  credited  with  understanding  of  the  significance  of  the 
expressions  that  provoke  their  reactions.  Perhaps  the 
expression  to  which  they  respond  earliest  is  the  sound  of 
the  wailing  of  other  children.  A  little  later  the  sight 
of  a  smiling  face,  the  expression  of  pleasure,  provokes  a 
smile.  Later  still  fear,  curiosity,  and,  I  think,  anger,  are 
communicated  readily  in  this  direct  fashion  from  one 
child  to  another.  Laughter  is  notoriously  infectious  all 
through  life,  and  this,  though  not  a  truly  instinctive  ex- 
pression, affords  the  most  familiar  example  of  sympa- 
thetic induction  of  an  affective  state.  This  immediate  and 
unrestrained  responsiveness  to  the  emotional  expressions 
of  others  is  one  of  the  great  charms  of  childhood.  One 
may  see  it  particularly  well  displayed  by  the  children  of 
some  savage  races  (especially  perhaps  of  the  negro  race), 
whom  it  renders  wonderfully  attractive. 

Adults  vary  much  in  the  degree  to  which  they  dis- 
play these  sympathetic  reactions,  but  in  few  or  none  are 
they  wholly  lacking.  A  merry  face  makes  us  feel 
brighter;  a  melancholy  face  may  cast  a  gloom  over  a 


98  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

cheerful  company;  when  we  witness  the  painful  emotion 
of  others,  we  experience  sympathetic  pain ;  when  we  see 
others  terror-stricken  or  hear  their  scream  of  terror,  we 
suffer  a  pang  of  fear  though  we  know  nothing  of  the 
cause  of  their  emotion  or  are  indifferent  to  it ;  anger  pro- 
vokes anger ;  the  curious  gaze  of  the  passer-by  stirs  our 
curiosity ;  and  a  display  of  tender  emotion  touches,  as  we 
say,  a  tender  chord  in  our  hearts.^  In  short,  each  of 
the  great  primary  emotions  that  has  its  characteristic  and 
unmistakable  bodily  expression  seems  to  be  capable  of 
being  excited  by  way  of  this  immediate  sympathetic  re- 
sponse. If,  then,  the  view  here  urged  is  true,  we  must 
not  say,  as  many  authors  have  done,  that  sympathy  is 
due  to  an  instinct,  but  rather  that  sympathy  is  founded 
j^  upon  a  special  adaptation  of  the  receptive  side  of  each  of 
the  principal  instinctive  dispositions,  an  adaptation  that 
renders  each  instinct  capable  of  being  excited  on  the 
perception  of  the  bodily  expressions  of  the  excitement  of 
the  same  instinct  in  other  persons. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  on  a  previous  page  that  this 
primitive  sympathy   implies  none  of  the   higher  moral 

*  Shortly  after  writing  these  lines  I  was  holding  a  child  in  my 
arms,  looking  out  of  window  on  a  dark  night.  There  came  a 
blinding  flash  of  lightning  and,  after  some  seconds,  a  crash  of 
thunder.  The  child  was  pleased  by  the  lightning,  but  at  the  first 
crack  of  thunder  she  screamed  in  terror;  immediately  upon 
hearing  the  scream,  I  experienced,  during  a  fraction  of  a  second, 
a  pang  of  fear  that  could  not  have  been  more  horrible  had  I 
been  threatened  with  all  the  terrors  of  hell.  I  am  not  at  all  dis- 
turbed by  thunder  when  alone.  This  incident  illustrates  very 
well  two  points — first  the  sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  by 
immediate  instinctive  reaction  to  the  expression  of  emotion  by 
another;  secondly,  the  specific  character  of  loud  noises  as  ex- 
citants of  fear.  Regarded  as  merely  a  sensory  stimulus,  the 
flash  of  lightning  was  far  more  violent  than  the  thunder;  yet  it 
provoked  no  fear  in  the  child. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES    99 

qualities.  There  are  persons  who  are  exquisitively  sym- 
pathetic in  this  sense  of  feeling  with  another,  experi- 
encing distress  at  the  sight  of  pain  and  grief,  pleasure  at 
the  sight  of  joy,  who  yet  are  utterly  selfish  and  are  not 
moved  in  the  least  degree  to  relieve  the  distress  they 
observe  in  others  or  to  promote  the  pleasure  that  is  re- 
flected in  themselves.  Their  sympathetic  sensibility 
merely  leads  them  to  avoid  all  contact  with  distressful 
persons,  books,  or  scenes,  and  to  seek  the  company  of 
the  careless  and  the  gay.  And  a  too  great  sensibility  of 
this  kind  is  even  adverse  to  the  higher  kind  of  conduct 
that  seeks  to  relieve  pain  and  to  promote  happiness ;  for 
the  sufferer's  expressions  of  pain  may  induce  so  lively  a 
distress  in  the  onlooker  as  to  incapacitate  him  for  giving 
help.  Thus  in  any  case  of  personal  accident,  or  where 
surgical  procedure  is  necessary,  many  a  woman  is  ren- 
dered quite  useless  by  her  sympathetic  distress.^ 

Suggestion  and  Suggestibility 

"Suggestion"  is  a  word  that  has  been  taken  over  from 
popular  speech  and  been  specialised  for  psychological 
use.  But  even  among  psychologists  it  has  been  used  in 
two  rather  different  senses.  A  generation  ago  it  was 
used  in  a  sense  very  similar  to  that  which  it  has  in  com- 
mon speech ;  one  idea  was  said  to  suggest  another.  But 
this  purpose  is  adequately  served  by  the  word  "reproduc- 
tion," and  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  use  "sugges- 
tion" only  in  a  still  more  technical  and  strict  manner,  and 
it  is  in  this  stricter  sense  that  it  is  used  in  these  pages. 
Psychologists  have  only  in  recent  years  begun  to  realise 

*  This  is  very  noticeable  in  the  case  of  vomiting.  A  tender 
mother  will  sometimes  turn  away  from  a  vomiting  child  with  an 
Irresistible  impulse  of  repulsion. 


100  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  vast  scope  and  importance  of  suggestion  and  sug- 
gestibility in  social  life.  Their  attention  was  directed  to 
the  study  of  suggestion  by  the  recognition  that  the 
phenomena  of  hypnotism,  so  long  disputed  and  derided, 
are  genuine  expressions  of  a  peculiar  abnormal  condi- 
tion of  the  mind,  and  that  the  leading  symptom  of  this 
condition  of  hypnosis  is  the  patient's  extreme  liability  to 
accept  with  conviction  any  proposition  submitted  to  him. 
This  peculiar  condition  was  called  one  of  suggestibility, 
and  the  process  of  communication  between  agent  and 
patient  which  leads  to  the  latter's  acceptance  of  any  prop- 
osition was  called  suggestion.  There  was  for  some  time 
a  tendency  to  regard  suggestibility  as  necessarily  an  ab- 
normal condition  and  suggestion  as  a  psychological  curi- 
osity. But  very  quickly  it  was  seen  that  there  are  many 
degrees  of  suggestibility,  ranging  from  the  slight  degree 
of  the  normal  educated  adult  to  the  extreme  degree  of 
the  deeply  hypnotised  subject,  and  that  suggestion  is  a 
process  constantly  at  work  among  us,  the  understanding 
of  which  is  of  extreme  importance  for  the  social  sciences. 
It  is  difficult  to  find  a  definition  of  suggestion  which 
will  include  all  varieties  and  will  yet  mark  it  olf  clearly 
from  other  processes  of  communication;  and  there  is 
no  sharp  line  to  be  drawn,  for  in  many  processes  by  which 
conviction  is  produced  there  is  a  more  or  less  strong 
element  of  suggestion  co-operating  with  logical  processes. 
The  following  definition  will,  I  think,  cover  all  varieties: 
Suggestion  is  a  process  of  communication  resulting  in 
\  the  acceptance  with  conviction  of  the  communicated 
proposition  in  the  absence  of  logically  adequate  grounds 
'  for  its  acceptance.  The  measure  of  the  suggestibility  of 
iany  subject  is,  then,  the  readiness  with  which  he  thus 
accepts  propositions.  Of  course,  the  proposition  is  not 
necessarily  communicated  in  formal  language,  it  may  be 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         loi 

implied  by  a  mere  gesture  or  interjection.  The  sugges- 
tibility of  any  subject  is  not  of  the  same  degree  at  all 
times;  it  varies  not  only  according  to  the  topic  and  ac- 
cording to  the  source  from  which  the  proposition  is 
communicated,  but  also  with  the  condition  of  the  sub- 
ject's brain  from  hour  to  hour.  The  least  degree  of  sug- 
gestibility is  that  of  a  wide-awake,  self-reliant  man 
of  settled  convictions,  possessing  a  large  store  of  system- 
atically organised  knowledge  which  he  habitually  brings 
to  bear  in  criticism  of  all  statements  made  to  him. 
Greater  degrees  of  suggestibility  are  due  in  the  main  to 
conditions  of  four  kinds — (i)  abnormal  states  of  the 
brain,  of  which  the  relative  dissociation  obtaining  in 
hysteria,  hypnosis,  normal  sleep,  and  fatigue,  is  the  most 
important;  (2)  deficiency  of  knowledge  or  convictions 
relating  to  the  topic  in  regard  to  which  the  suggestion  is 
made,  and  imperfect  organisation  of  knowledge;  (3)  the 
impressive  character  of  the  source  from  which  the  sug- 
gested proposition  is  communicated;  (4)  peculiarities  of 
the  character  and  native  disposition  of  the  subject. 

Of  these  the  first  need  not  engage  our  attention,  as  it 
has  but  little  part  in  normal  social  life.  The  operation 
of  the  other  three  conditions  may  be  illustrated  by  an 
example.  Suppose  a  man  of  wide  scientific  culture  to 
be  confronted  with  the  proposition  that  the  bodies  of  the 
dead  will  one  day  rise  from  their  graves  to  live  a  new 
^ife.  He  does  not  accept  it,  because  he  knows  that  dead 
bodies  buried  in  graves  undergo  a  rapid  and  complete 
decomposition,  and  because  the  acceptance  of  the  propo- 
sition would  involve  a  shattering  of  the  whole  of  his 
strongly  and  systematically  organised  knowledge  of 
natural  processes.  But  the  same  proposition  may  be 
readily  accepted  by  a  child  or  a  savage  for  lack  of  any 
system  of  critical  belief  and  knowledge  that  would  con- 


I02  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

flict  with  it.  Such  persons  may  accept  almost  any  ex- 
travagant proposition  with  primitive  creduHty.  But,  for 
the  great  majority  of  civilised  adults  of  little  scientific 
culture,  the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  the  proposition 
will  depend  upon  the  third  and  fourth  of  the  conditions 
enumerated  above.  Even  a  young  child  or  a  savage  may 
reject  such  a  proposition  with  scorn  if  it  is  made  to 
him  by  one  of  his  fellows ;  but,  if  the  statement  is 
solemnly  affirmed  by  a  recognised  and  honoured  teacher, 
supported  by  all  the  prestige  and  authority  of  an  ancient 
and  powerful  Church,  not  only  children  and  savages,  but 
most  civilised  adults,  will  accept  it,  in  spite  of  a  certain 
opposition  offered  by  other  beliefs  and  knowledge  that 
they  possess.  Suggestion  mainly  dependent  for  its  suc- 
cess on  this  condition  may  be  called  prestige  suggestion. 
But  not  all  persons  of  equal  knowledge  and  culture 
are  equally  open  to  prestige  suggestion.  Here  the  fourth 
factor  comes  into  play,  namely,  character  and  native  dis- 
position. As  regards  the  latter  the  most  important  con- 
dition determining  individual  suggestibility  seems  to  be 
the  relative  strengths  of  the  two  instincts  that  were  dis- 
cussed in  Chapter  IH.  under  the  names  "instincts  of 
self-assertion"  and  "subjection."  Personal  contact  with 
any  of  our  fellows  seems  regularly  to  bring  one  or  other, 
or  both,  of  these  two  instincts  into  play.  The  presence 
of  persons  whom  we  regard  as  our  inferiors  in  the  par- 
ticular situation  of  the  moment  evokes  the  impulse  of  self- 
assertion;  towards  such  persons  we  are  but  little  or  not 
at  all  suggestible.  But,  in  the  presence  of  persons  who 
make  upon  us  an  impression  of  power  or  of  superiority 
of  any  kind,  whether  merely  of  size  or  physical  strength, 
or  of  social  standing,  or  of  intellectual  reputation,  or, 
perhaps,  even  of  tailoring,  the  impulse  of  submission  is 
brought  into  play,  and  we  are  thrown  into  a  submissive, 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES    103 

receptive  attitude  towards  them ;  or,  if  the  two  impulses 
are  simultaneously  evoked,  there  takes  place  a  painful 
struggle  between  them  and  we  suffer  the  complex  emo- 
tional disturbance  known  as  bashful  feeling.^  In  so  far 
as  the  impulse  of  submission  predominates  we  are  sug- 
gestible towards  the  person  whose  presence  evokes  it. 
Persons  in  whom  this  instinct  is  relatively  strong  will, 
other  things  being  the  same,  be  much  subject  to  prestige 
suggestion ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  persons  in  whom 
this  impulse  is  weak  and  the  opposed  instinct  of  self- 
assertion  is  strong  will  be  apt  to  be  self-confident,  "cock- 
sure" persons,  and  to  be  but  little  subject  to  prestige 
suggestion.  In  the  course  of  character-formation  by 
social  intercourse,  excessive  strength  of  either  of  these 
impulses  may  be  rectified  or  compensated  to  some  ex- 
tent ;  the  able,  but  innately  submissive,  man  may  gain 
a  reasonable  confidence;  the  man  of  self-assertive  dis- 
position may,  if  not  stupid,  learn  to  recognise  his  own 
weaknesses ;  and  in  so  far  as  these  cerhpensations  are  ef- 
fected liability  to  prestige  suggestion  will  be  diminished 
or  increased. 

Children  are,  then,  inevitably  suggestible,  firstly,  be- 
cause of  their  lack  of  knowledge  and  lack  of  systematic 
organisation  of  such  knowledge  as  they  have;  secondly, 
because  the  superior  size,  strength,  knowledge,  and  repu- 
tation of  their  elders  tend  to  evoke  the  impulse  of  sub- 
mission and  to  throw  them  into  the  receptive  attitude. 
And  it  is  in  virtue  largely  of  their  suggestibility  that  they 
so  rapidly  absorb  the  knowledge,  beliefs,  and  especially 
the  sentiments,  of  their  social  environment.  But  most 
adults  also  remain  suggestible,  especially  towards  mass- 
suggestion  and  towards  the  propositions  which  they 
know  to  be  supported  by  the  whole  weight  of  society  or 

*See  p.  150,  for  bashfulness. 


I04  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

by  a  long  tradition.  To  the  consideration  of  the  social 
importance  of  suggestion  we  must  return  in  a  later  chap- 
ter. 

This  brief  discussion  may  be  concluded  by  the  repudia- 
tion of  a  certain  peculiar  implication  attached  tc  the 
word  "suggestion"  by  some  writers.  They  speak  of 
"suggestive  ideas"  and  of  ideas  working  suggestively  in 
the  mind,  implying  that  such  ideas  and  such  working 
have  some  peculiar  potency,  a  potency  that  would  seem 
to  be  almost  of  a  magical  character ;  but  they  do  not  suc- 
ceed in  making  clear  in  what  way  these  ideas  and  their 
operations  differ  from  others.  The  potency  of  the  idea 
conveyed  by  suggestion  seems  to  be  nothing  but  the 
potency  of  conviction;  and  convictions  produced  by 
logical  methods  seem  to  have  no  less  power  to  determine 
thought  and  action,  or  even  to  influence  the  vital  proc- 
esses, than  those  produced  by  suggestion;  the  principal 
difference  is  that  by  suggestion  conviction  may  be  pro- 
duced in  regard  to  propositions  that  are  insusceptible 
of  logical  demonstration,  or  even  are  opposed  to  the 
evidence  of  perception  and  inference. 

A  few  words  must  be  said  about  contra-suggestion. 
By  this  word  it  is  usual  to  denote  the  mode  of  action  of 
one  individual  on  another  which  results  in  the  second  ac- 
cepting, in  the  absence  of  adequate  logical  grounds,  the 
contrary  of  the  proposition  asserted  or  implied  by  the 
agent.  There  are  persons  with  whom  this  result  is  very 
liable  to  be  produced  by  any  attempt  to  exert  suggestivd 
influence,  or  even  by  the  most  ordinary  and  casual  ut- 
terance. One  remarks  to  such  a  person  that  it  is  a  fine 
day,  and,  though,  up  to  that  moment,  he  may  have 
formulated  no  opinion  about  the  weather,  and  have  been 
quite  indifferent  to  it,  he  at  once  replies,  "Well,  I  don't 
agree  with  you.    I  think  it  is  perfectly  horrid  weather." 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES    105 

Or  one  says  to  him,  "I  think  you  ought  to  take  a  holi- 
day," and,  though  he  had  himself  contemplated  this 
course,  he  replies,  "No,  I  don't  need  one,"  and  becomes 
more  immovably  fixed  in  this  opinion  and  the  correspond- 
ing course  of  action  the  more  he  is  urged  to  adopt  their 
opposites.  Some  children  display  this  contra-suggesti- 
bility  very  strongly  for  a  period  and  afterwards  return 
to  a  normal  degree  of  suggestibility.  But  in  some  per- 
sons it  becomes  habitual  or  chronic;  they  take  a  pride 
in  doing  and  saying  nothing  like  other  people,  in  dressing 
and  eating  differently,  in  defying  all  the  minor  social 
conventions.  Commonly,  I  believe,  such  persons  regard 
themselves  as  displaying  great  strength  of  character  and 
cherish  their  peculiarity.  In  such  cases  the  permanence 
of  the  attitude  may  have  very  complex  mental  causes; 
but  in  its  simpler  instances,  and  probably  at  its  inception 
in  all  instances,  contra-suggestion  seems  to  be  determined 
by  the  undue  dominance  of  the  impulse  of  self-assertion 
over  that  of  submission,  owing  to  the  formation  of  some 
rudimentary  sentiment  of  dislike  for  personal  influence 
resulting  from  an  unwise  exercise  of  it — a  sentiment 
which  may  have  for  its  object  the  influence  of  some  one 
person  or  personal  influence  in  general. 

Imitation 

This  word  has  been  used  by  M.  Tarde  in  his  well7 
known  sociological  treatises  to  cover  processes  of 
sympathy  and  suggestion  as  well  as  the  processes  to 
which  the  name  is  more  usually  applied,  and,  since  the 
verb  "to  suggest"  can  be  applied  only  to  the  part  of  the 
agent  in  the  process  of  suggestion,  and  since  we  need 
some  verb  to  describe  the  part  of  the  patient,  it  is  per- 
haps legitimate  to  extend  the  meaning  of  the  word  "imi- 


io6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

tate"  in  this  way,  so  as  to  make  it  cover  the  process  of 
accepting  a  suggestion. 

But  in  the  more  strict  sense  of  the  word  "imitation," 
it  is  applicable  only  to  the  imitation  or  copying  by  one  in- 
dividual of  the  actions,  the  bodily  movements,  of  an- 
other. Imitation  and  imitativeness  in  this  narrower 
sense  of  the  words  are  usually  ascribed  to  an  instinct. 
Thus  James  writes :  "This  sort  of  imitativeness  is  pos- 
sessed by  man  in  common  with  other  gregarious  animals, 
and  is  an  instinct  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term."^ 
Baldwin  also  uses  the  phrase  "instinct  of  imitation"  and 
its  equivalents,^  but  applies  the  word  "imitation"  to  so 
great  a  variety  of  processes  that  it  can  hardly  be  sup- 
posed he  means  to  attribute  all  of  them  to  the  operation 
of  this  assumed  instinct. 

The  reasons  for  refusing  to  recognise  an  instinct  of 
imitation  may  be  stated  as  follows : — Imitative  actions 
are  extremely  varied,  for  every  kind  of  action  may  be 
imitated ;  there  is  therefore  nothing  specific  in  the  nature 
of  the  imitative  movements  and  in  the  nature  of  the  sense- 
impressions  by  which  the  movements  are  excited  or 
guided.  And  this  variety  of  movement  and  of  sense- 
impression  is  not  due  to  complication  of  a  congenital  dis- 
position, such  as  takes  place  in  the  case  of  all  the  true 
instincts;  for  this  variety  characterises  imitative  move- 
ments from  the  outset.  More  important  is  the  fact  that 
underlying  the  varieties  of  imitative  action,  there  is  no 
common  affective  state  and  no  common  impulse  seeking 
satisfaction  in  some  particular  change  of  state.  And 
we  have  seen  reason  to  regard  such  a  specific  impulse, 

*  "Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  408. 
""Mental  Development,  Methods  and  Processes,"  3rd  ed.,  p. 
281.    New  York,  1906. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         107 

prompting  to  continued  action  until  its  satisfaction  is 
secured,  as  the  most  essential  feature  of  every  truly  in- 
stinctive process.  Further,  if  we  consider  the  principal 
"l^rieties  of  imitative  action,  we  find  that  all  are  explicable 
without  the  assumption  joTa  s_pecial  instinct  of  imitatioiu- 
Imitative  actions  of  at  least  three,  perhaps  of  five,  dis- 
tinct classes  may  be  distinguished,  according  to  the 
kind  of  mental  process  of  which  they  are  the  outcome. 

1.  The  expressive  actions  that  are  sympathetically  ex- 
cited in  the  way  discussed  under  the  head  of  "sympathy" 
form  one  class  of  imitative  actions.  Thus,  when  a  child 
responds  to  a  smile  with  a  smile,  when  he  cries  on  hearing 
another  child  cry,  or  when  he  runs  to  hide  himself  on 
seeing  other  children  running  frightened  to  shelter,  he 
may  be  said  to  be  imitating  the  actions  of  others.  If  we 
were  right  in  our  conclusions  regarding  the  responses  of 
primitive  sympathy,  these  outwardly  imitative  actions 
are  instinctive,  and  are  due,  not  to  an  instinct  of  imita- 
tion, but  to^  special  adaptations  of  the  principal  instinc- 
tive dispositions  on  their  sensory  sides,  and  they  are 
secondary  to  the  sympathetic  induction  of  the  emotions 
and  feelings  they  express.  Imitative  actions  of  this  sort 
are  displayed  by  all  the  gregarious  animals,  and  they 
are  the  only  kind  of  which  most  of  the  animals  seem 
capable.  They  are  displayed  on  a  great  scale  by  crowds 
of  human  beings  and  are  the  principal  source  of  the  wild 
excesses  of  which  crowds  are  so  often  guilty. 

2.  Imitative  actions  of  a  second  class  are  simple  ideo- 
motor  actions.  The  clearest  examples  are  afforded  by 
subjects  in  hypnosis  and  in  certain  other  abnormal  con- 
ditions. Many  hypnotised  subjects  will,  if  their  atten- 
tion is  forcibly  drawn  to  the  movements  of  the  hypnotiser, 
imitate  his  every  action.  A  certain  proportion  of  the 
people  of  the  Malay  race  are  afflicted  with  a  disorder 


io8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

known  as  latah,'^  which  renders  them  liable  to  behave  like 
the  hypnotic  subject  in  this  respect.  And  all  of  us,  if  our 
attention  is  keenly  concentrated  on  the  movements  of 
another  person,  are  apt  to  make,  at  least  in  a  partial  in- 
cipient fashion,  every  movement  we  observe — e.g.,  on 
watching  a  difficult  stroke  in  billiards,  the  balancing  of  a 
tight-rope  walker,  the  rhythmic  swaying  of  a  dancer. 
In  all  these  cases  the  imitative  movement  seems  to  be  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  visual  presentation  of  the  movement 
of  another  is  apt  to  evoke  the  representation  of  a  similar 
movement  of  one's  own  body,  which,  like  all  motor 
representations,  tends  to  realise  itself  immediately  in 
movement.  Many  of  the  imitative  movements  of  children 
are  of  this  class.  Some  person  attracts  a  child's  curious 
attention,  by  reason  perhaps  of  some  unfamiliar  trait; 
the  child  becomes  absorbed  in  watching  him  and  pres- 
ently imitates  his  movements.  It  seem  to  be  in  virtue  of 
this  simple  ideo-motor  imitation  that  a  child  so  easily 
picks  up,  as  we  say,  the  peculiarities  of  gesture,  and 
the  facial  expressions  and  deportment  generally,  of  those 
among  whom  he  lives.  This  kind  of  imitation  may  be  in 
part  voluntary  and  so  merges  into  a  third  kind — de- 
liberate, voluntary,  or  self-conscious  imitation. 

3.  Some  person,  or  some  kind  of  skilled  action,  ex- 
cites our  admiration,  and  we  take  the  admired  person  for 
our  model  in  all  things  or  deliberately  set  ourselves  to 
imitate  the  action. 

Between  the  second  and  third  kinds  is  a  fourth  kind 
of  imitation  allied  to  both,  and  affording  for  the  child  a 
transition  from  the  one  to  the  other.  In  cases  of  this 
fourth  type  the  imitator,  a  child  say,  observes  a  certain 

*An  excellent  account  of  this  peculiar  affliction  may  be  found 
in  Mr.  Hugh  Clifford's  "Studies  in  Brown  Humanity,"  as  also  in 
Sir  F.  A.  Swettenham's  "Malay  Sketches.** 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         109 

action,  and  his  attention  is  concentrated,  not  on  the 
movements,  but  on  the  effects  produced  by  the  move- 
ments. When  the  child  again  finds  himself  in  a  situation 
similar  to  that  of  the  person  he  has  observed,  the  idea 
of  the  effect  observed  comes  back  to  mind  and  perhaps 
leads  directly  to  action.  For  example,  a  child  observes 
an  elder  person  throw  a  piece  of  paper  on  the  fire ;  then, 
when  on  a  later  occasion  the  child  finds  himself  in  the 
presence  of  fire  and  paper,  he  is  very  apt  to  imitate  the 
action ;  he  produces  a  similar  effect,  though  he  may  do 
so  by  means  of  a  very  different  combination  of  move- 
ments. This  kind  of  imitation  is  perhaps  in  many  cases 
to  be  regarded  as  simple  ideo-motor  action  due  to  the 
tendency  of  the  idea  to  realise  itself  in  action ;  but  in 
other  cases  various  impulses  may  be  operative. 

For  the  sake  of  completeness  a  fifth  kind  of  imitation 
may  be  mentioned.  It  is  the  imitation  by  very  young 
children  of  movements  that  are  not  expressive  of  feeling 
or  emotion;  it  is  manifested  at  an  age  when  the  child 
cannot  be  credited  with  ideas  of  movement  or  with  delib- 
erate self-conscious  imitation.  A  few  instances  of  this 
sort  have  been  reported  by  reliable  observers ;  e.g.,  Prey- 
er  ^  stated  that  his  child  imitated  the  protrusion  of  his 
lips  when  in  the  fourth  month  of  life.  These  cases  have 
been  regarded,  by  those  who  have  not  themselves  wit- 
nessed similar  actions,  as  chance  coincidences,  because  it 
is  impossible  to  bring  them  under  any  recognised  type 
of  imitation.  I  have,  however,  carefully  verified  the  oc- 
currence of  this  sort  of  imitation  in  two  of  my  own  chil- 
dren ;  one  of  them  on  several  occasions  during  his  fourth 
month  repeatedly  put  out  his  tongue  when  the  person 
whose  face  he  was  watching  made  this  movement.  For 
the  explanation  of  any  such  simple  imitation  of  a  par- 
*"Die  Seek  des  Kindes,"  5te  Auflage,  Leipzig,   1900,  S.   180. 


no  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ticular  movement  at  this  early  age,  we  have  to  assume 
the  existence  of  a  very  simple  perceptual  disposition  hav- 
ing this  specific  motor  tendency,  and,  since  we  cannot 
suppose  such  a  disposition  to  have  been  acquired  at  this 
age,  we  are  compelled  to  suppose  it  to  be  innately  or- 
ganised. Such  an  innate  disposition  would  be  an  ex- 
tremely simple  rudimentary  instinct.  It  may  be  that 
every  child  inherits  a  considerable  number  of  such  rudi- 
mentary instincts,  and  that  they  play  a  considerable  part 
in  facilitating  the  acquisition  of  new  movements,  espe- 
cially perhaps  of  speech-movements. 

We  shall  have  to  consider  in  later  chapters  the  ways 
in  which  these  three  forms  of  mental  interaction,  sym- 
pathy, suggestion,  and  imitation,  play  their  all-important 
parts  in  the  moulding  of  the  individual  by  his  social  en- 
vironment, and  in  the  life  of  societies  generally. 

Play 

Another  tendency,  one  that  the  human  mind  has  in 
common  with  many  of  the  animals,  demands  brief  no- 
tice, namely,  the  ten^j^jicy  to  play.    Play  also  is  sometimes 
■^  ascribed  to  an  instinct ;  otrt-nt)  one  of  the  many  varieties 
of  playful  activity  can  properly  be  ascribed  to  an  instinct 
of  play.     Nevertheless   play  must  be   reckoned  among 
the  native  tendencies  of  the  mind  of  high  social  value. 
Children  and  the  young  of  many  species  of  animal  take 
to  play  spontaneously  without  any  teaching  or  example. 
Several  theories  of  play  have  been  put  forward,  each 
claiming  to  sum  up  the  phenomena  in  one  brief  formula. 
The  oldest  of  the  modern  theories  was  proposed  by  the 
ooet  Schiller,  and  was  developed  by  Herbert  Spencer, 
■^i^ccording  to  this  view,  play  is  always  the  expression  of 
•v^surplus  of  nervous  energy.    The  young  creature,  being 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         iii 

tended  and  fed  by  its  parents,  does  not  expend  its  energy 
upon  the  quest  of  food,  in  earning  its  daily  bread,  and 
therefore  has  a  surplus  store  of  energy  which  overflows 
along  the  most  open  nervous  channels,  producing  pur- 
poseless movements  of  the  kind  that  are  most  frequent 
in  real  life.  There  is,  no  doubt,  an  element  of  truth  in 
tlie  theory,  but  it  is  clearly  inadequate  to  account  for 
the  facts,  even  in  the  case  of  the  simple  play  of  animals. 
It  does  not  sufficiently  account  for  the  forms  the  play 
activities  take ;  still  less  is  it  compatible  with  the  fact 
that  young  animals,  as  well  as  young  children,  will  often 
play  till  they  are  exhausted.  The  element  of  truth  is 
that  the  creature  is  most  disposed  to  play  when  it  is  so 
well  nourished  and  rested  that  it  has  a  surplus  of  stored 
energy.    But  this  is  true  also  of  work. 

Others,  looking  chiefly  at  the  play  of  children,  have 
regarded  their  play  as  a  special  instance  of  the  operation 
of  the  law  of  recapitulation ;  and  they  have  sought  to 
show  that  the  child  retraverses  in  his  play  the  successive 
culture  periods  of  human  history,  owing  to  the  successive 
development  or  ripening  of  native  tendencies  to  the  forms 
of  activity  supposed  to  have  been  characteristic  of  these 
periods.  This  recapitulatory  theory  of  play  and  the  edu- 
cational practice  based  on  it  are  founded  on  the  fallacious 
belief  that,  as  the  human  race  traversed  the  various  cul- 
ture periods,  its  native  mental  constitution  acquired  very 
special  tendencies,  and  that  each  period  of  culture  was, 
as  it  were,  the  expression  of  a  certain  well-marked  stage 
in  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind.  This  view  can  hard- 
ly be  accepted,  for  we  have  little  reason  to  suppose  that 
human  nature  has  undergone  any  such  profound  modifi- 
cations in  the  course  of  the  development  of  civilisation  out 
of  barbarism  and  savagery. 


112  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Professor  Karl  Groos  ^  has  recently  propounded  a  new 
theory  of  play.  He  sets  out  from  the  consideration  of  the 
play  of  young  animals,  and  he  points  out  the  obvious 
utility  to  them  of  play  as  a  preparation  for  the  serious 
business  of  life,  as  a  perfecting  by  practice  of  the  more 
specialised  and  difficult  kinds  of  activity  on  the  successful 
exercise  of  which  their  survival  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence must  depend.  Consider  the  case  of  the  kitten 
playing  with  a  ball  on  the  floor.  It  is  clear  that,  in  the 
course  of  such  playing,  the  kitten  improves  its  skill  in 
movements  of  the  kind  that  will  be  needed  for  the 
catching  of  its  prey  when  it  is  thrown  upon  its  own  re- 
sources. Or  take  the  case  of  puppies  playfully  fighting 
with  one  another.  It  seems  clear  that  the  practice  they 
get  in  quick  attack  and  avoidance  must  make  them  better 
fighters  than  they  would  become  if  they  never  played 
in  this  way. 

Starting  out  from  considerations  of  this  sort,  Professor 
Groos  argues  that  the  occurrence  of  youthful  play  among 
almost  all  animals  that  in  mature  life  have  to  rely  upon 
rapid  and  varied  skilled  movements  justifies  us  in  be- 
lieving that  the  period  of  immaturity,  with  its  tendency 
to  playful  activities,  is  a  special  adaptation  of  the  course 
of  individual  development,  an  adaptation  that  enables  the 
creature  to  become  better  fitted  to  cope  with  its  environ-, 
ment  than  it  could  be  if  it  enjoyed  no  such  period  of 
play.  Groos  therefore  reverses  the  Schiller-Spencer  dic- 
tum, and  says — it  is  not  that  young  animals  play  be- 
cause they  are  young  and  have  surplus  nervous  energy: 
we  must  believe  rather  that  the  higher  animals  have  this 
period  of  youthful  immaturity  in  order  that  they  may 
play.  The  youthful  play-tendencies  are,  then,  according 
to  this  view,  special  racial  endowments  of  high  biological 

*"The  Play  of  Animals"  and  "The  Play  of  Man." 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         113 

utility,  the  products,  no  doubt,  of  the  operation  of  natural 
selection.  If  we  ask — In  what  does  this  special  adapta- 
tion consist?  the  answer  is — it  consists  in  the  tendency 
for  the  various  instincts  (on  the  skilled  exercise  of  which 
adult  efficiency  depends)  to  ripen  and  to  come  into  ac- 
tion in  each  individual  of  the  species  before  they  are 
needed  for  serious  use.  We  have  other  and  better  grounds 
for  believing  that  the  time  of  ripening  of  any  instinct 
in  the  individuals  of  any  species  is  liable  to  be  shifted 
forwards  or  backwards  in  the  age-scale  during  the  course 
of  racial  evolution,  so  that  the  order  of  their  ripening 
and  of  the  appearance  of  the  various  instinctive  activities 
in  the  individual  does  not  conform  to  the  law  of  reca- 
pitulation. There  is,  therefore,  nothing  improbable  in  this 
view  that  play  is  determined  by  the  premature  ripening  of 
instincts.  But  it  will  not  fully  account  for  all  the  facts 
of  animal  play,  and  still  less  for  all  forms  of  children's 
play.  There  remains  a  difficulty  of  a  very  interesting 
kind. 

Consider  the  case  of  young  dogs  playfully  fighting  to- 
gether. If  we  simply  assume  that  this  is  the  expression 
of  the  prematurely  ripened  pugnacious  instinct,  we  ought 
to  expect  to  find  the  young  dogs  really  fighting  and  do- 
ing their  best  to  hurt  one  another;  and,  since  anger  is 
the  afifective  state  that  normally  accompanies  the  exer- 
cise of  this  instinct,  we  should  expect  to  observe  every 
symptom  of  anger  as  the  dogs  roll  about  together.  But  it 
is  perfectly  clear  that,  although  the  dogs  are  capable 
of  anger  on  other  occasions,  they  make  all  the  movements 
of  combat  without  anger  and  in  a  peculiarly  modified 
manner ;  one  seizes  the  other  by  the  throat  and  pins  him 
to  the  ground,  and  so  forth ;  but  all  this  is  done  in  such 
a  way  as  not  to  hurt  his  opponent ;  the  teeth  are  nevei 
driven  home,  and  no  blood  is  drawn.     That  they  do  no 


114  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

hurt  to  one  another  is  by  no  means  due  to  lack  of  muscUw 
lar  power  or  of  sharp  teeth;  nor  is  there  any  lack  of 
energy  in  the  movements  in  general ;  in  merely  chasing  one 
another  the  utmost  exertions  are  made.  This  peculiar 
modification  of  the  combative  movements  seems  to  be  an 
essential  character  of  the  playful  fighting  of  many  young 
animals,  and  boys  are  no  exception  to  the  rule.  How  is 
it  to  be  accounted  for  and  reconciled  with  Professor 
Groos's  theory  of  play?  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley  has  made 
a  suggestion  in  answer  to  this  question.^  He  takes  the 
case  of  the  playful  biting  of  young  dogs  as  typical  of  play, 
and  points  out  that,  not  only  in  this  case  but  in  many 
others  also,  a  certain  restraint  of  action  is  manifested  in 
play ;  and  he  proposes  to  regard  a  certain  degree  of  self- 
restraint  as  the  psychological  characteristic  of  play.  He 
takes  the  view  that,  when  the  dog  bites  your  hand  in 
play,  he  knows  he  must  not  exert  so  much  force  as  to 
hurt  you ;  "there  is  restraint,  a  restraint  which  later  may 
be  formulated  as  the  rule  of  the  game."  Mr.  Bradley 
here  seems  to  ascribe  to  the  playfully  biting  dog  a  cer- 
tain deliberate  self-restraint.  I  think  that  in  doing  so 
he  greatly  over-estimates  the  complexity  of  the  creature's 
mental  process,  and  ascribes  to  it  a  degree  of  self-con- 
sciousness and  a  power  of  intelligent  control  of  conduct 
of  which  it  is  really  quite  incapable.  We  might  find  a 
parallel  to  the  psychological  situation  in  which  Bradley 
supposes  the  dog  to  be,  in  the  case  of  a  boy  who,  fighting 
with  another  in  real  earnest,  is  aware  that,  if  he  should 
do  the  other  more  than  a  slight  hurt,  he  will  bring  pun- 
ishment upon  himself,  and  who  therefore  exerts  a  strong 
control  over  his  actions  and  hits  his  opponent  only  in 
places  where  no  great  harm  can  be  done.  To  suppose 
that  the  mental  process  of  the  young  dog  at  all  approach- 

*"Mind,"  N.S.,  vol.  XV.,  p.  468. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         115 

es  this  degree  of  complexity  is,  I  think,  quite  impossible. 
And  that  this  view  is  untenable  is  shown  also  by  the  fact 
that  young  dogs  display  this  playful  fighting  and  its  char- 
acteristic restraint  of  movement  at  a  very  early  age,  when 
they  can  hardly  have  learnt  self-restraint  from  experience 
of  the  ill  consequences  of  biting  too  hard.  It  is  not  that 
the  young  dog,  when  playfully  fighting,  has  the  impulse 
to  bite  with  all  his  force  and  that  he  keeps  a  strong  voli- 
tional control  over  his  movements ;  we  must  rather  sup- 
pose, since  the  movements  he  makes  are  in  all  other  re- 
spects like  those  of  real  combat,  that  the  instinct  of  which 
they  are  the  expression  is  a  peculiarly  modified  form  of 
the  combative  instinct. 

The  movements,  with  their  characteristic  differences 
from  those  of  actual  combat,  must  be  regarded  as  instinc- 
tive, but  as  due  to  the  excitement  of  some  modified  form 
of  the  combative  instinct,  an  instinct  diflFerentiated  from, 
and  having  an  independent  existence  alongside,  the  orig- 
inal instinct.  And  that  the  movements  are  not  the  ex- 
pression of  the  true  combative  instinct  is  shown  also  by 
the  fact  that  the  specific  affective  state,  namely  anger, 
which  normally  accompanies  its  excitement,  is  lacking  in 
playful  activity.  Professor  Groos's  theory  that  play  is 
due  to  the  premature  ripening  of  instincts  needs,  then, 
to  be  modified  by  the  recognition  of  some  special  differ- 
entiation of  the  instincts  which  find  expression  in  playful 
activity. 

It  is  obvious  that  Groos's  theory  is  applicable  to  some 
of  the  plays  of  children,  especially  the  warlike  and  hunt- 
ing games  of  boys  and  the  doll-playing  of  girls.  But 
there  are  other  forms  of  childish  play  which  cannot  be 
accounted  for  in  this  way  and  which  are  not  the  direct 
expressions  of  instincts.  The  motives  of  play  are  various 
and  often  complex,  and  they  cannot  be  characterised  in 


ii6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

any  brief  formula;  nor  can  any  hard-and-fast  line  be 
drawn  between  work  and  play.  Beside  the  class  of  plays 
to  which  Professor  Groos's  formula  is  applicable  we  may 
recognise  several  principal  classes  of  play  motives — such 
are  the  desire  of  increased  skill,  the  pleasure  of  make- 
believe,  the  pleasure  in  being  a  cause.  But  a  motive  that 
may  co-operate  with  others  in  almost  all  games,  and 
which  among  ourselves  is  seldom  altogether  lacking,  is 
the  desire  to  get  the  better  of  others,  to  emulate,  to  excel. 
This  motive  plays  an  important  part,  not  only  in  games, 
but  in  many  of  the  most  serious  activities  of  Hfe,  to 
■  which  it  gives  an  additional  zest.  For  many  a  politician 
it  is  a  principal  motive,  and  many  a  professional  and 
many  a  commercial  man  continues  his  exertions,  under 
the  driving  power  of  this  motive,  long  after  the  imme- 
diate practical  ends  of  his  professional  activity  have  been 
achieved ;  and  in  the  collective  life  of  societies  it  plays  no 
small  part.  But,  wherever  it  enters  in,  it  is  recognised 
that  it  imparts  something  of  a  playful  character  to  the 
activity;  a  recognition  which  often  finds  expression  in 
the  phrase  "playing  the  game"  applied  to  activities  of 
the  most  diverse  and  serious  kinds. 

Whence  comes  this  strong  desire  and  impulse  to  sur- 
pass our  rivals?  We  saw  reason  for  refusing  to  accept 
a  specific  instinct  of  rivalry  or  emulation  in  the  animals, 
for  rivalry  and  emulation  imply  self -consciousness.  It 
is  a  defensible  view  that  the  impulse  of  rivalry  derives 
from  the  instinct  of  self-assertion ;  but,  though  it  is  prob- 
ably complicated  and  reinforced  in  many  cases  by  the 
co-operation  of  this  impulse,  it  can  hardly  be  wholly 
identified  with  it.  Nor  can  it  be  identified  with  the  com- 
bative impulse ;  for  this  too  seems  to  persist  in  the  most 
highly  civilised  peoples  with  all  its  fierce  strength  and  its 
specific  brutal  tendency  to  destroy  the  opponent.     The 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         117 

obscurity  of  the  subject  and  the  importance  of  this  im- 
pulse of  rivalry  in  the  life  of  societies  tempt  me  to  oflfer 
a  speculation  as  to  its  nature  and  origin  that  is  suggested 
by  the  issue  of  our  discussion  of  the  playful  fighting  of 
young  animals. 

The  impulse  of  rivalry  is  to  get  the  better  of  an  op- 
ponent in  some  sort  of  struggle ;  but  it  differs  from  the 
combative  impulse  in  that  it  does  not  prompt  to,  and  does 
not  find  satisfaction  in,  the  destruction  of  the  opponent. 
Rather,  the  continued  existence  of  the  rival,  as  such,  but 
as  a  conquered  rival,  seems  necessary  for  its  full  satis- 
faction ;  and  a  benevolent  condescension  towards  the  con- 
quered rival  is  not  incompatible  with  the  activity  of  the 
impulse,  as  it  is  with  that  of  the  combative  impulse.  Now, 
these  peculiarities  of  the  impulse  of  rivalry,  when 
stripped  of  all  intellectual  complications,  seem  to  be  just 
those  of  the  modified  form  of  the  combative  impulse  that 
seems  to  underlie  the  playful  fighting  of  young  animals. 
May  it  not  be,  then,  that  the  impulse  of  rivalry  is  essen- 
tially this  impulse  to  playful  fighting,  the  impulse  of  an 
instinct  differentiated  from  the  combative  instinct  in  the 
first  instance  in  the  animal  world  to  secure  practice  in  the' 
movements  of  combat?  In  favour  of  this  view  it  may  be 
pointed  out  that  in  the  human  race  the  native  strength 
of  the  impulse  of  rivalry  seems  on  the  whole  to  run 
parallel  with,  or  to  be  closely  correlated  with,  the  strength 
of  the  pugnacious  instinct.  The  impulse  of  rivalry  is 
very  strong  in  the  peoples  of  Europe,  especially,  perhaps, 
in  the  English  people ;  it  constitutes  the  principal  mo- 
tive to  almost  all  our  many  games,  and  it  lends  its 
strength  to  the  support  of  almost  every  form  of  activity. 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  we  are  a  highly  pugnacious  peo- 
ple or  that  our  Anglo-Saxon  and  Danish  and  Norman 
ancestors  were  probably  the  most  terrible  fighting-men 


ii8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  world  has  ever  seen.  On  the  other  hand,  men  of  the 
unwarlike  races,  e.g.,  the  mild  Hindoo  or  the  Burman, 
seem  relatively  free  from  the  impulse  of  rivalry.  To 
men  of  these  races  such  games  as  football  seem  utterly 
absurd  and  irrational  and,  in  fact,  they  are  absurd  and 
irrational  for  all  men  born  without  the  impulse  of  rivalry ; 
whereas  men  of  warlike  races,  e.g.,  the  Maoris,  who,  like 
our  ancestors,  found  for  many  generations  their  chief 
occupation  and  delight  in  warfare,  take  up  such  games 
keenly  and  even  learn  very  quickly  to  beat  us  at  them. 
I  think  we  may  even  observe  in  young  boys  the  re- 
capitulation of  the  process  of  differentiation  of  the  im- 
pulse of  rivalry  from  the  combative  instinct.  The  latter 
usually  comes  into  play  at  a  very  early  age,  but  the 
former  does  not  usually  manifest  itself  until  the  age  of 
four  or  five  years.  Up  to  this  time  the  more  active  play- 
ing of  boys  is  apt  to  be  formless  and  vague,  a  mere  run- 
ning about  and  shouting,  a  form  of  play  sufficiently  ac- 
counted for  by  the  Schiller-Spencer  theory.  But  then 
the  impulse  of  rivalry  begins  to  work,  and  from  that  time 
it  may  dominate  the  boy's  life  more  and  more,  in  so  far 
as  his  activities  are  spontaneous.  In  this  connection  it  is 
important  to  note  that  the  growth  of  self-consciousness 
must  favour  and  strengthen  the  operation  of  this  impulse, 
whereas  it  is  rather  adverse  to  the  display  of  most  of  the 
other  instinctive  activities  in  their  crude  forms.^ 

^  While  living  among  the  hybrid  Papuan-Melanesian  people  of 
a  small  group  of  islands  in  the  Torres  Straits,  I  was  much 
struck  by  the  marked  weakness  of  the  impulse  of  rivalry  among 
them.  Though  adults  and  children  spent  a  large  proportion  of 
their  time  in  playing,  the  spirit  of  rivalry  was  displayed  but 
feebly  in  a  few  of  the  games  and  hardly  at  all  in  most  of  their 
playing.  I  failed  completely  to  get  the  boys  to  take  up  various 
English  games,  and  the  failure  seemed  due  to  the  lack  of  the 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         119 

A  universal  tendency  of  the  mind,  which  is  so  familiar 
as  to  run  some  risk  of  being  neglected,  must  be  briefly 
mentioned ;  namely,  the  tendency  for  every  process  to 
be  repeated  more  readily  in  virtue  of  its  previous  occur- 
rence and  in  proportion  to  the  frequency  of  its  previous 
repetitions.  The  formulation  of  this  tendency  may  be 
named  the  law  of  habit,  if  the  word  "habit"  is  under- 
stood in  the  widest  possible  sense.  In  virtue  of  this  ten- 
dency the  familiar  as  such  is  preferred  to  the  less  famil- 
iar, the  habitual  and  routine  mode  of  action  and  reac- 
tion, in  all  departments  of  mental  life,  to  any  mode  of 
action  necessitating  any  degree  of  novel  adjustment. 
And  the  more  familiar  and  habitual  is  any  mental  proc- 
ess or  mode  of  action  in  a  situation  of  a  given  type,  the 
more  difficult  is  it  to  make  any  change  or  improvement 
in  it  and  the  more  painful  is  any  change  of  the  character 
of  the  situation  that  necessitates  an  effort  of  readjust- 
ment. This  is  the  great  principle  by  which  all  acquisi- 
tions of  the  individual  mind  are  preserved  and  in  virtue 
of  which  the  making  of  further  acquisitions  is  rendered 
more  difficult,  through  which  the  indefinite  plasticity  of 
the  infant's  mind  gradually  gives  place  to  the  elasticity 
of  the  mature  mind. 

impulse  of  rivalry.  The  same  defect  or  peculiarity  seemed  to  be 
responsible  for  the  fact  that  the  people  were  so  content  with 
their  equality  in  poverty  that,  although  opportunities  for  earn- 
ing high  wages  in  adjacent  islands  v/ere  abundant,  few  could  be 
induced  to  avail  themselves  of  them,  or  to  work  for  more  than 
a  few  months,  if  they  did  so.  These  people  are  unwarlike,  and 
the  men  and  boys  never  fight  with  one  another — a  striking  fact, 
v/hich  certainly  is  not  to  be  explained  by  excellence  of  the  so- 
cial system  or  refmement  of  manners ;  for  but  a  generation  ago 
these  people  were  notorious  for  having  devoured  the  crews  of 
several  vessels  wrecked  upon  the  islands. 


120  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Temperament 

In  order  to  complete  this  brief  sketch  of  the  more  im- 
portant features  of  the  native  mental  constitution,  a  few 
words  must  be  said  about  temperament.  This  is  a  very 
difficult  subject  which  most  psychologists  are  glad  to 
leave  alone.  Yet  temperament  is  the  source  of  many 
of  the  most  striking  mental  differences  between  individ- 
uals and  peoples. 

Under  the  head  of  temperamental  factors  we  group  a 
number  of  natively  given  constitutional  conditions  of  our 
mental  life  that  exert  a  constant  influence  on  our  mental 
processes.  This  influence  may  be  slight  at  any  one  time, 
but  since  its  effects  are  cumulative — i.e.,  since  it  operates 
as  a  constant  bias  in  one  direction  during  mental  develop- 
ment and  the  formation  of  habits — it  is  responsible  for 
much  in  the  mental  make-up  of  the  adult.  Temperament 
'l  is,  as  the  ancients  clearly  saw,  largely  a  matter  of  bodily 
\  constitution ;  that  is  to  say  that  ambngTlie  temperamental 
Tf actors  th<e  influences  on  the  menial  life  exerted  by  the 
great  bodily  organs  occupy  a_2romiD£nLplace.  But  there 
I  are  other  tactors  aTso^  and  it  is  impossible  to  bring  them 
all  under  one  brief  formula;  and,  since  temperament  is 
the  resultant  of  these  many  relatively  independent  fac- 
tors, it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  any  clearly  defined 
classes  of  temperaments,  as  the  ancients,  as  well  as  many 
modern  authors,  have  attempted  to  do.  Some  of  the  best 
modern  psychologists  have  been  led  into  absurdities  by 
attempting  this  impossible  task.  The  truth  is  that  we 
are  only  just  beginning  to  gain  some  slight  insight  into 
the  conditions  of  temperament,  and-^«)greas,.in_this_j;;e- 
S£ect  must  depend  chiefly  upon  the  progress  of  physi- 
ology. In  one  respect  only  can  we  make  a  decided  ad- 
vance upon  the  ancients — we  can  realise  the  great  com- 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         121 

plexity  of  the  problem  and  can  frankly  admit  our  ig- 
norance. 

The  temperamental  factors  may  conveniently  be 
grouped  in  two  principal  classes — PQjhe  one  hand^  th.eJn;-_  ' 
fluences  exerted  on  the  nervous_system  and,  through  it, 
on  mental  process  by  the  functioning  of~tRe  bodiTy~or- 
gans ;  on  the  other  hand^enexaLiuiKliQna.Lpeculiarities  -• 
of  the  nervous  tissues.  We  may  best  grasp  something 
oythe  nature  of  the  former  class  by  the  observation  of 
cases  in  w^hich  their  influence  is  abnormally  great.  Of  re- 
cent 3''ears  some  light  has  been  thrown  upon  temperament 
by  the  discovery  of  the  great  influence  exerted  on  men- 
tal life  by  certain  organs  whose  functions  had  been,  and 
in  many  respects  still  are,  obscure.  The  most  notable  ex- 
ample is  perhaps  the  thyroid  body,  a  small  mass  of  soft 
cellular  tissue  in  the  neck.  We  know  now  that  defect 
of  the  functions  of  this  organ  may  reduce  any  one  of  us 
to  a  state  of  mental  apathy  bordering  on  idiocy,  and  that 
its  excessive  activity  produces  the  opposite  effect  and  may 
throw  the  mind  into  an  over-excitable  condition  verging 
on  maniacal  excitement.  Again,  we  know  that  certain 
diseases  tend  to  produce  specific  changes  of  temperament, 
that_  phthisis  often  gives  it  ,a_bright  and  hopeful  turn, 
diabetes  adissatisfied  and  cantankerous  turn.  It  is  clear, 
that,  in  some  sucH  cases  of  profound  alteration  of  tem- 
perament by  bodily  disorder,  the  effects  are  produced  by 
means  of  the  chemical  products  of  metabolism,  which, 
being  thrown  out  of  the  disordered  tissues  into  the  blood 
and  reaching  the  nervous  system  by  way  of  the  blood- 
stream, chemically  modify  its  processes.  It  is  probable 
that  every  organ  in  the  body  exerts  in  this  indirect  way 
some  influence  upon  our  mental  life,  and  that  tempera- 
ment is  in  large  measure  the  balance  or  resultant  of  all 
the?e  many  contributory  chemical  influences. 


122  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Most  of  the  bodily  organs  probably  co-operate  in  de- 
termining temperament  in  another  way  hardly  less  im- 
portant. All  of  them  are  supplied  with  afferent  nerves, 
nerves  that  constantly  carry  impulses  up  from  the  or- 
gans to  the  central  nervous  system.  And  all  these  im- 
pulses probably  modify  in  some  degree  the  general  work- 
ing of  the  nervous  system  and  play  some  part  in  deter- 
mining the  "coensesthesia,"  the  obscure  background  of 
consciousness  on  which  the  general  tone  of  our  mental 
life  chiefly  depends.  The  organs  of  reproduction  afford 
the  most  striking  example  of  this  kind  of  temperamental 
influence.  The  skeletal  system  of  muscles  also  probably 
exerts  a  great  influence  of  this  kind — a  well-developed 
and  active  muscular  system  tends  to  maintain  a  certain 
tone  of  the  nervous  system  that  favours  an  alert  and 
confident  habit  of  mind.  Perfect  functioning  of  all  the 
bodily  organs  not  only  favours  in  this  way  mental  ac- 
tivity in  general,  but  tends  to  an  objective  habit  of  mind; 
whereas  imperfection  of  organic  functions  tends  to  pro- 
duce an  undue  prominence  in  consciousness  of  the  bodily 
self  and,  therefore,  an  introspective  and  brooding  habit 
of  mind. 

As  regards  the  part  played  by  the  general  constitution* 
of  the  nervous  system  itself  in  determining  temperament, 
we  are  still  more  ignorant  than  in  regard  to  the  influence 
of  the  bodily  organs.  A  few  characters  of  the  nervous 
tissues  we  can  point  to  with  confidence  as  determining 
differences  of  temperament.  Such  are  native  differences 
of  excitability,  of  rapidity  of  response  and  transmission 
of  the  nervous  impulse,  and  differences  in  respect  to  fat- 
igability and  rapidity  of  recuperation.  But  there  are 
probably  other  subtle  differences  of  which  we  know 
nothing. 
vJ\    Temperament,  then,  is  a  complex  resultant  of  many 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES         123 

factors  each  of  which  is  in  the  main  natively  determined, 
and,  though  they  are  alterable  perhaps  by  disease  and 
the  influence  of  the  physical  environment,  especially  by 
temperature  and  food,  they  are  but  little  capable  of 
being  modified  by  voluntary  effort;  and  the  mental  de- 
velopment of  individuals  is,  as  it  were,  constantly  biassed 
in  this  or  that  direction  by  peculiarities  of  temperament, 
the  selective  activity  of  the.  mind  is  given  this  or  that 
trend ;  e.g.,  the  child^jiatively'/endowed  with  a  cheerful  \J 
temperament  will  be  receptive  to  bright  influences,  his  /\ 
thoughts  will  tend  to  dwell  on  the  future  in  pleased  ' 
anticipation,  optimistic  ideas  will  readily  find  a  foothold 
in  his  mind,  while  gloomy,  pessimistic  ideas  will  gain  no 
permanent  influence  over  him  in  spite  of  being  intellec- 
tually grasped.  And  with  the  child  of  gloomy  tempera- 
ment all  this  will  be  reversed.  In  this  way  temperament 
largely  determines  our  outlook  on  life,  our  cast  of 
thought  and  lines  of  action. 

Temperament  must  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
disposition  and  from  character,  though  these  distinctions 
are  not  always  observed  by  popular  speech  and  thought. 
Thefaisposition  of  a  person  is  the  sum  of  all  the  innat^  / 
dispcTSitions  or  instincts  wim^eir  specific  impulses  orj  V 
tendencies  of  the  kind  discussed  in  Chapter  II.  Differ-* 
ences  of  disposition  are  due  to  native  differences  in  the 
strengths  of  the  impulses  of  the  instincts,  or  to  differ- 
ences in  their  strengths  induced  by  use  and  disuse  in 
the  course  of  individual  development,  or  more  rarely  to 
absence  of  one  or  other  of  the  instincts.  Thus  we  prop- 
erly speak  of  an  irascible,  or  tender,  or  timid  disposi- 
tion; not  of  irascible,  tender,  or  timid  temperament. 
Character,  on  theother  hand,  is  the  sum  of  acquired  ten- 
dencies  built  up  on  the  pativp  h^<^\9.  of  disposition  and 
temperament ;  it  includes  our  sentiments  and  our- habits 


124  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

in  the  widest  sense  of  the  term,  and  is  the  product  of  the 
interaction  of  disposition  and  temperament  with  the  phys- 
ical and  social  environment  under  the  guidance  of  intel- 
Iligence.  Thus  a  man's  temperament  and  disposition  are 
in  the  main  born  with  him  and  are  but  little  alterable 
V  by  any  effort  he  may  make,  whereas  character  is  made 
largely  by  his  own  efforts. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  AND  THE  CONSTITUTION 
OF  SOME  OF  THE  COMPLEX   EMOTIONS 

WE  seldom  experience  the  primary  emotions  dis- 
cussed in  Chapter  III.  in  the  pure  or  unmixed 
forms  in  which  they  are  commonly  manifested  by  the 
animals.  Our  emotional  states  commonly  arise  from  the 
simultaneou|s._excitenient  of  tvro^r"lTi_ore_ofjthe 
tive  dispositions;  and  the  majority  of  the  names  currently 
used^  to  denote  our  various  emotions  are  the  names  of 
such  mixed,  secondary,  or  complex  emotions.  That  the 
great  variety  of  our  emotional  states  may  be  properly  re- 
garded as  the  result  of  the  compounding  of  a  relatively 
small  number  of  primary  or  simple  emotions  is  no  new 
discovery.  Descartes,  for  example,  recognised  only  six 
primary  emotions,  or  passions  as  he  termed  them,  name- 
ly— admiratjon.  love,  hatred,  desire,  joy,  and  sadness,  and  ; 
he  wrote,  "All  the  others  are  composed  of  some  out  of 
these  six  and  derived  from  them."  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  formulated  any  principles  for  the  determination 
of  the  primaries  and  the  distinction  of  them  from  the 
secondaries. 

The  compounding  of  the  primary  emotions  is  largely y, 
though  not  wholly,  due  to  the  existence  of  sentiments,! 
and  some  of  the  complex  emotional  processes  can  only 
be  generated  from  sentiments.  Before  going  on  to  dis- 
cuss the  complex  emotions,  we  must  therefore  try  to 

125 


126  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

understand  as  clearly  as  possible  the  nature  of  a  senti- 
ment. 

The  word  "sentiment"  is  still  used  in  several  different 
senses.  M.  Ribot  and  other  French  authors  use  its 
French  equivalent  as  covering  all  the  feelings  and  emo- 
tions, as  the  most  general  name  for  the  affective  aspect 
of  mental  processes.  We  owe  to  Mr.  A.  F,  Shand  ^  the 
recognition  of  features  of  our  mental  constitution  of  a 
most  important  kind  that  have  been  strangely  overlooked 
by  other  psychologists,  and  the  application  of  the  word 
"sentiments"  to  denote  features  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Shand 
points  out  that  our  emotions,  or,  more  strictly  speaking, 
our  emotional  dispositions,  tend  to  become  organised  in 
systems  about  the  various  objects  and  classes  of  objects 
that  excite  them.  Such  an  organised  system  of  emotional 
tendencies  is  not  a  fact  or  mode  of  experience,  but  is  a 
feature  of  the  complexly  organised  structure  of  the  mind 
that  underlies  all  our  mental  activity.    To  such  an  organ- 

(ised  system  of  emotional  tendencies  centred  about  some 
object  Mr.  Shand  proposes  to  apply  the  name  "senti- 
ment." This  application  of  the  word  is  in  fair  accor- 
dance with  its  usage  in  popular  speech,  and  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  it  will  rapidly  be  adopted  by  psychologists. 
The  conception  of  a  sentiment,  as  defined  by  Mr. 
Shand,  enables  us  at  once  to  reduce  to  order  many  of 
the  facts  of  the  life  of  impulse  and  emotion,  a  province 
of  psychology  which  hitherto  has  been  chaotic  and  ob- 
scure. That,  in  spite  of  the  great  amount  of  discussion 
of  the  affective  life  in  recent  centuries,  it  should  have 
been  reserved  for  a  contemporary  writer  to  make  this 
very  important  discovery  is  an  astonishing  fact,  so  ob- 
vious and  so  necessary  does  the  conception  seem  when 

*  "Character  and  the  Emotions,"  Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  v.,  and  "M. 
Ribot's  Theory  of  the  Passions,"  Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  xvi. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  127 

once  it  has  been  grasped.  The  failure  of  earlier  writers 
to  arrive  at  the  conception  must  be  attributed  to  tl>e  long 
prevalence  of  the  narrow  and  paralysing  doctrine  accord- 
ing to  which  the  task  of  the  psychologist  is  merely  to 
observe,  analyse,  and  describe  the  content  of  his  own 
consciousness. 

The  typical  sentiments  are  love  and  liate.  and  it  will 
suffice  for  our  present  purpose  if  we  briefly  consider  the 
nature  and  mode  of  formation  of  these  two.  Now,  it  is 
a  source  of  great  confusion  that,  sentiments  never  having 
been  clearly  distinguished  from  the  emotions  until  Mr. 
Shand  performed  this  great  service  to  psychology,  the 
words  love  and  hate  have  been  used  to  denote  both  emo- 
tions and  sentiments.  Thus  the  disposition  of  the  pri- 
mary emotion  we  have  discussed  under  the  name  of 
"tender  emotion"  is  an  essential  constituent  of  the  system 
of  emotional  dispositions  tHaf  constitutes  the  sentiment 
of  love ;  and  the  name  "love"  is  often  applied  both  to  this 
emotion  and  to  the  sentiment.  In  a  similar  way  the  word 
"hate"  is  commonly  applied  to  a  complex  emotion  com- 
pounded of  anger  and  fear  and  disgust,  as  well  as  to  the 
sentiment  which  comprises  the  dispositions  to  these  emo- 
tions as  its  most  essential  constituents.  But  it  is  clear 
that  one  may  properly  be  said  to  love  or  to  hate  a  man 
at  the  times  when  he  is  not  at  all  present  to  one's  thought 
and  when  one  is  experiencing  no  emotion  of  any  kind. 
What  is  meant  by  saying  that  a  man  loves  or  hates  an- 
other is  that  he  is  liable  to  experience  any  one  of  a  nujpi- 
ber  of  emotions  and  feelings  on  contemplating  that  other, 
the  nature  of  the  emotion  depending  upon  the  situation  / 
of  the  other;  that  is  to  say,  common  speech  recognises/ 
that  love  and  hate  are,  not  merely  emotions,  but  endur-| 
ing  tendencies  to  experience  certain  emotions  wheneverjj^ 
the  loved  or  hated  object  comes  to  mind j_.thergf ore,  in 


128  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

refusing  to  apply  the  names  "love"  and  "hate"  to  any 
of  the  emotions  and  in  restricting  them  to  these  enduring 
complex  dispositions  which  are  the  sentiments,  no  more 
violence  is  done  to  language  than  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  the  avoidance  of  the  confusion  that  has  hitherto  pre- 
vailed. It  must  be  noted  that  the  sentiments  of  love  and 
hate  comprise  many  of  the  same  emotional  dispositions ; 
but  the  situations  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment  that 
evoke  the  same  emotions  are  very  different  and  in  the 
main  of  opposite  character  in  the  two  cases.  Thus,  as 
Shand  points  out,  when  a  man  has  acquired  the  senti- 
ment of  love  for  a  person  or  other  object,  he  is  apt  to 
experience  tender  emotion  in  its  presence,  fear  or  anxiety 
when  it  is  in  danger,  anger  when  it  is  threatened,  sorrow 
when  it  is  lost,  joy  when  the  object  prospers  or  is  re-. 
stored  to  him,  gratitude  towards  him  who  does  good  to 
it,  and  so  on ;  and,  when  he  hates  a  person,  he  experiences 
fear  or  anger  or  both  on  his  approach,  joy  when  that 
other  is  injured,  anger  when  he  receives  favours. 

It  is  going  too  far  to  say,  as  Shand  does,  that  with 
inversion  of  the  circumstances  of  the  object  all  the  emo- 
tions called  forth  by  the  loved  object  are  repeated  in  re- 
lation to  the  hated  object;  for  the  characteristic  and  most 
essential  emotion  of  the  sentiment  of  love  is  tender  emo- 
tion, and  this  is  not  evoked  by  any  situation  of  the  hated 
object;  its  disposition  has  no  place  in  the  sentiment  of 
hate.  It  is  clear,  nevertheless,  that  the  objects  of  these 
two  very  different  sentiments  may  arouse  many  of  the 
same  emotions,  and  that  the  two  sentiments  comprise  emo- 
tional dispositions  that  are  in  part  identical,  or,  in  other 
words,  that  some  of  the  emotional  dispositions,  or  cen- 
tral nuclei  of  the  instincts,  are  members  of  sentiments 
of  both  kinds.  It  is,  I  think,  helpful,  at  least  to  those 
who  make  use  of  visual  imagery,  to  attempt  to  picture 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS 


129 


a  sentiment  as  a  nervous  disposition  and  to  schematise 
it  crudely  by  the  aid  of  a  diagram.  Let  us  draw  a  num- 
ber of  circles  lying  in  a  row,  and  let  each  circle  stand 
for  one  of  the  primary  emotional  dispositions.  We  are 
to  suppose  that  the  excitement  of  each  one  of  these  is 
accompanied  by  the  corresponding  emotion  with  its  spe- 
cific impulse.  These  dispositions  must  be  regarded  as 
natively  independent  of  one  another,  or  unconnected.  Let 
A  be  the  object  of  a  sentiment  of  hate  and  B  be  the  object 

P 


B 


/K  A  A  A  A 

Diagram  to  illustrate  the  neural  bases  of  the  sentiments  of  hate  and  love. 
A  is  the  object  of  the  sentiment  of  hate,  B  that  of  the  sentiment  o£ 
love;  oc  and  S  are  the  neural  dispositions  whose  excitement  accom- 
panies presentations  or  ideas  of  A  and  B  respectively;  a  is  connected 
with  the  affective-conative  dispositions  R,  F,  P,  C,  S  and  fi  with  T,  A, 
S,  C,  P,  F,  with  degrees  of  intimacy  indicated  by  the  thicknesses  of  the 
connecting  lines.  The  letters  of  the  lower  row  stand  for  the  names  of 
the  instincts,  as  follows: — R  =  Repulsion,  F  =Fear,  P  =Pugnacitj',  C 
=  Curiosity,  S  =  Subjection,  A  =  Self-assertion,  T=  Parental  instinct. 

of  a  sentiment  of  love ;  and  let  a  in  our  diagram  stand 
for  the  complex  neural  disposition  whose  excitement  un- 
derlies the  idea  or  presentation  of  A,  and  let  j8  be  the 
corresponding  disposition  concerned  in  the  presentation 
of  B.  Then  we  must  suppose  that  a  becomes  intimately 
connected  with  R,  F,  and  P,  the  central  nuclei  of  the 
instincts  of  repulsion,  fear,  and  pugnacity,  and  less  inti- 
mately with  C  and  S,  those  of  curiosity  and  of  submis- 
sion, but  not  at  all  with  T,  the  central  nucleus  of  the 
tender  or  parental  instinct.     Whenever,  then,  a  comes 


I30  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

into  play  (i.e.,  whenever  the  idea  of  A  rises  to  conscious- 
ness) its  excitement  tends  to  spread  at  once  to  all  these 
dispositions ;  and  we  must  suppose  that  they  are  thrown 
into  a  condition  of  sub-excitement  which  very  easily 
rises  to  discharging  point  in  any  one  of  them,  or  in  sev- 
eral together — e.g.,  in  P  and  R,  when  the  emotional  state 
of  the  subject  becomes  one  of  mingled  anger  and  dis- 
gust, and  the  impulses  of  these  two  emotions  determine 
his  actions,  attitudes,  and  expressions.  Similarly 
fi  must  be  supposed  to  be  connected  most  intimately 
with  T,  the  disposition  of  the  tender  emotion,  and  less 
intimately  with  A,  S,  C,  P  and  F  and  not  at  all  with  R. 
If  this  diagram  represents  the  facts  however  crudely  and 
inadequately,  we  may  say  that  the  structural  basis  of  the 
sentiment  is  a  system  of  nerve-paths  by  means  of  which 
the  disposition  of  the  idea  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment 
is  functionally  connected  with  several  emotional  disposi- 
tions. The  idea,  taken  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word  as 
something  that  is  stored  in  the  mind,  may  therefore  be 
said  to  be  the  essential  nucleus  of  the  sentiment,  without 
which  it  cannot  exist,  and  through  the  medium  of  which 
several  emotional  dispositions  are  connected  together  to 
form  a  functional  system.  The  emotional  dispositions 
comprised  within  the  system  of  any  sentiment  are,  then, 
not  directly  connected  together;  and,  in  accordance  with 
the  law  of  forward  conduction,  the  excitement  of  any 
one  of  them  will  not  spread  backwards  to  the  cognitive 
disnositions,  but  only  in  the  efferent  direction,  as  indicat- 
d^^  the  arrows  in  the  diagram.  Hence  any  one  such 
'sposition  may  become  an  organic  constituent  of  an 
ndefinitely  large  number  of  sentiments. 

The  process  by  which  such  a  complex  psycho-physical 
disposition  or  system  of  dispositions  is  built  up  may  be 
supposed  to  be  essentially  that  process    (discussed   in 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  131 

Chapter  II.)  by  which  an  instinctive  disposition  becomes 
capable  of  being  directly  excited  by  other  objects  than 
its  natively  given  objects,  working  in  conjunction  with 
the  law  of  habit.  The  oftener  the  object  of  the  senti- 
ment becomes  the  object  of  any  one  of  the  emotions  com- 
prised in  the  system  of  the  sentiment,  the  more  readily 
will  it  evoke  that  emotion  again,  because,  in  accordance 
with  the  law  of  habit,  the  connexions  of  the  psycho- 
physical dispositions  become  more  intimate  the  more 
frequently  they  are   brought   into   operation. 

After  this  brief  exposition,  and  this  attempt  at  a 
physiological  interpretation,  of  Mr.  Shand's  doctrine  of 
the  sentiment,  we_rnay  pass  on  to  consider  some  of  the 
complex  emotions,  and  to  attempt  to  exhibit  them  as 
fusions  of  the  primary  emotions  we  have  distinguished. 
If  we  find  that  most  of  the  complex  emotions  can  be  sat- 
isfactorily displayed  as  fusions  of  some  two,  or  more, 
of  the  primary  emotions  we  have  distinguished,  to- 
gether with  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain,  excitement  and 
relaxation,  this  will  be  good  evidence  that  the  emotions 
we  have  designated  as  the  primaries  are  truly  primary, 
and  it  will  confirm  the  principle  by  which  we  were 
guided  in  the  choice  of  these  primaries,  the  principle, 
namely,  that  each  primary  emotion  accompanies  the 
excitement  of  one  of  the  instincts,  and  is  the  afifective 
aspect  of  a  simple  instinctive  mental  process. 

Since  the  primary  emotions  may  be  combined  in  a 
large  number  of  different  ways,  and  since  the  primaries 
that  enter  into  the  composition  of  a  secondary  emo- 
tion may  be  present  in  many  dififerent  degrees  of  inten- 
sity, the  whole  range  of  complex  emotions  presents  an 
indefinitely  large  number  of  qualities  that  shade  im- 
perceptibly into  one  another  without  sharp  dividing  lines. 
The  names  provided  by  common  speech  designate  merely 


132  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

a  certain  limited  number  of  the  most  prominent  of  these 
complexes. 

In  seeking  to  analyse  the  complex  emotions  we  must 
rely  largely  on  the  method  recommended  by  Mr.  Shand 
— we  must,  that  is  to  say,  observe  the  conative  tendencies 
of  the  emotions,  the  nature  of  the  actions  to  which  they 
impel  us.  For  every  emotion,  no  matter  how  complex 
it  may  be,  has  its  characteristic  conjunction  of  motor 
tendencies,  which  together  give  rise  to  the  characteristic 
attitudes  and  expressions  of  the  emotion.  How  true  this 
is  we  may  realise  by  considering  how  successfully  a  skil- 
ful actor  can  portray  even  the  more  complex  emotions. 

And  in  attempting  to  analyse  any  emotion  we  must 
consider  it  as  experienced  and  displayed  at  a  high  pitch 
of  intensity ;  for  we  cannot  hope  to  recognise  the  ele- 
mentary qualities  and  impulses  of  the  primary  emo- 
tions in  complexes  of  low  intensity. 

We  may  roughly  divide  the  complex  emotional  states 
into  two  groups — on  the  one  hand  those  M'hich  do  not 
necessarily  imply  the  existence  of  any  organised  senti- 
ment, and  on  the  other  hand  those  which  can  be  ex- 
perienced only  in  virtue  of  the  existence  of  some  senti- 
ment within  the  system  of  which  they  may  be  said  to 
be  excited.  We  will  consider  first  some  of  the  more 
important  emotions  of  the  former  class. 

Some  of  the  Complex  Emotions  that  do  not  necessarily 
imply  the  Existence  of  Sentiments 

I  Admiration. — This  is  certainly  a  true  emotion,  and 

^  jis  as  certainly  not  primary.     It  is  distinctly  a  complex 

/aflFective    state    and    implies    a    considerable    degree   of 

Vmental  development.    We  can  hardly  suppose  any  of  the 

animals  to  be  capable  of  admiration  in  the  proper  sense 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  133 

of  the  word,  nor  is  it  displayed  by  very  young  children. 
It  is  not  merely  a  pleasurable  perception  or  contempla- 
tion. One  may  get  a  certain  pleasure  from  the  per- 
ception or  contemplation  of  an  object  without  feeling 
any  admiration  for  it;  e.g.,  a  popular  ditty  played 
on  a  barrel-organ  may  give  one  pleasure,  though  one 
admires  neither  the  ditty  nor  the  mode  of  its  pro- 
duction, and  though  one  may  a  little  despise  oneself  on 
account  of  the  pleasure  one  feels.  Nor  is  it  merely  in- 
tellectual and  pleasurable  appreciation  of  the  greatness 
or  excellence  of  the  object.  There  seem  to  be  two  pri- 
mary emotions  essentially  involved  in  the  complex  state 
provoked  by  the  contemplation  of  the  admired  object, 
namely,  wonder  and  negative  self-feeling  or  the  emotion 
of  submission.  Wonder  is  revealed  by  the  impulse  to 
approach  and  to  continue  to  contemplate  the  admired  ob- 
ject, for,  as  we  saw,  this  is  the  characteristic  impulse  of 
the  instinct  of  curiosity ;  and  wonder  is  clearly  expressed 
on  the  face  in  intense  admiration.  In  children  one  may 
observe  the  element  of  wonder  very  clearly  expressed 
and  dominant.  "Oh,  how  wonderful!"  or — "Oh,  how 
clever!"  or — "How  did  you  do  it?"  are  phrases  in  which 
a  child  naturally  expresses  its  admiration  and  by  which 
the  element  of  wonder  and  the  impulse  of  curiosity  are 
clearly  revealed.  And  as  soon  as  we  feel  that  we  com- 
pletely understand  the  object  we  have  admired,  and  can 
wholly  account  for  it,  our  wonder  ceases  and  the  emo- 
tion evoked  by  it  is  no  longer  admiration. 

But  admiration  is  more  than  wonder.^  We  do  not 
simply  proceed  to  examine  the  admired  object  as  we 
should  one  that  provokes  merely  our  curiosity  or  won- 
der.    We  approach  it  slowly,  with  a  certain  hesitation; 

^  I  would  remind  the  reader  that  "wonder"  is  here  used  in  a 
sense  a  little  diflrerent  from  the  usual  one   (see  p.  61  )• 


134  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

we  are  humbled  by  its  presence,  and,  in  the  case  of  a 
person  whom  we  intensely  admire,  we  become  shy,  Hke 
a  child  in  the  presence  of  an  adult  stranger ;  we  have  the: 
impulse  to  shrink  together,  to  be  still,  and  to  avoid  at- 
tracting his  attention;  that  is  to  say,  the  instinct  of 
submission,  of  self-abasement,  is  excited,  Avith  its  cor- 
responding emotion  of  negative  self-feeling,  by  the  per- 
ception that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  superior  power, 
something  greater  than  ourselves.  Now,  this  instinct 
and  this  emotion  are  primarily  and  essentially  social. 
The  primary  condition  of  their  excitement  is  the  pres- 
ence of  a  person  bigger  and  more  powerful  than  oneself ; 
and,  when  we  admire  such  an  object  as  a  picture  or  a 
machine,  or  other  work  of  art,  the  emotion  still  has  this 
social  character  and  personal  reference;  the  creator  of 
the  work  of  art  is  more  or  less  clearly  present  to  our 
minds  as  the  object  of  our  emotion,  and  often  we  say, 
"What  a  wonderful  man  he  is !" 

Is,  then,  the  emotion  of  admiration  capable  of  being 
evoked  in  us  only  by  other  persons  and  their  works?  It 
is  obviously  true  that  we  admire  natural  objects,  a  beau- 
tiful flower  or  landscape,  or  a  shell,  or  the  perfect  struc- 
ture of  an  animal  and  its  nice  adaptation  to  its  mode 
of  life.  In  these  cases  no  known  person  is  called  to 
mind  as  the  object  of  our  admiration;  but,  just  because 
admiration  implies  and  refers  to  another  person,  is  essen- 
tially, in  so  far  as  it  involves  negative  self-feeling,  an 
attitude  towards  a  person,  it  leads  us  to  postulate  a  per- 
son or  personal  power  as  the  creator  of  the  object  that 
calls  it  forth.  Hence  in  all  ages  the  admiration  of  men 
for  natural  objects  has  led  them  to  personify  the  power, 
or  powers,  that  have  brought  those  objects  into  being, 
either  as  superhuman  beings  who  have  created,  and  who 
preside  over,  particular  classes  of  objects,  or  as  a  su~ 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  135 

preme  Creator  of  all  things;  and,  if  the  intellect  rejects 
all  such  conceptions  as  anthropomorphic  survivals  from  a 
ruder  age,  the  admiration  of  natural  objects  still  leads 
men  to  personify,  under  the  name  of  Nature,  the  power 
that  has  produced  them.  It  is,  I  think,  true  that,  if  this 
sense  of  a  personal  power  is  not  suggested  by  any  ob- 
ject that  we  contemplate,  the  emotion  we  experience  is 
merely  wonder,  or  at  least  is  not  admiration.  It  is  be- 
cause negative  self-feeling  is  an  essential  element  in  ad- 
miration that  the  extremely  confident,  self-satisfied,  and 
thoroughly  conceited  person  is  incapable  of  admiration, 
and  that  genuine  admiration  implies  a  certain  humility 
and  generosity.  It  may  be  added  that  much  admiration 
— all  aesthetic  admiration,  in  fact — includes  also  an  ele- 
ment of  pleasure,  the  conditions  of  which  may  be  very 
complex. 

As  an  example  of  the  further  complication  of  an  emo- 
tion, let  us  consider  the  nature  of  our  emotion  if  the 
object  that  excites  our  admiration  is  also  of  a  threatening 
or  mysterious  nature  and,  therefore,  capable  of  exciting 
fear — a  tremendous  force  in  action  such  as  the  Victoria 
Falls,  or  a  display  of  the  aurora  horealis,  or  a  magnifi- 
cent thunderstorm.  The  impulse  of  admiration  to  draw 
near  humbly  and  to  contemplate  the  object  is  more  or  less 
neutralised  by  an  impulse  to  withdraw,  to  run  away,  the 
impulse  of  fear.  We  are  kept  suspended  in  the  middle 
distance,  neither  approaching  very  near  nor  going  quite 
away;  admiration  is  blended  with  fear,  and  we  experi- 
ence the  emotion  we  call  awe. 

Awe  is  of  many  shades,  ranging  from  that  in  which 
admiration  is  but  slightly  tinged  with  fear  to  that  in 
which  fear  is  but  slightly  tinged  with  admiration.  Ad- 
miration is,  then,  a  binary  compound,  awe  a  tertiary  com- 
pound.   And  awe  may  be  further  blended  to  form  a  still 


136  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

more  complex  emotion.  Suppose  that  the  power  that  ex- 
cites awe  is  also  one  that  we  have  reason  to  regard  as 
beneficent,  one  that,  while  capable  of  annihilating  us  in  a 
moment,  yet  works  for  our  good,  sustains  and  protects 
us,  one  that  evokes  our  gratitude.  Awe  then  be- 
comes compounded  with  gratitude  and  we  experience  the 
highly  compound  emotion  of  reverence.  Reverence  is 
the  religious  emotion  par  excellence;  few  merely  human 
powers  are  capable  of  exciting  reverence,  this  blend  of 
wonder,  fear,  gratitude,  and  negative  self-feeling.  Those 
human  beings  who  inspire  reverence,  or  who  are  by  cus- 
tom and  convention  considered  to  be  entitled  to  inspire 
it,  usually  owe  their  reverend  character  to  their  being 
regarded  as  the  ministers  and  dispensers  of  Divine 
power. 

What,  then,  is  gratitude,  which  enters  into  the  emo- 
tion of  reverence  for  the  Divine  power?  Gratitude  is 
itself  complex.  It  is  a  binary  compound  of  tender  emo- 
tion and  negative  self-feeling.  To  this  view  it  may  be 
objected — If  tender  emotion  is  the  emotion  of  the  pa- 
rental instinct  whose  impulse  is  to  protect,  how  can  this 
emotion  be  evoked  by  the  Divine  power?  The  answer 
to  this  question  is — In  the  same  way  as  the  child's  tender 
emotion  towards  the  parent  is  evoked,  namely,  by  sym- 
pathy. Tender  emotion  occupies  a  peculiar  position 
among  the  primary  emotions,  in  that,  being  directed  to- 
wards some  other  person  and  its  impulse  directly  mak- 
ing for  the  good  of  that  other,  it  is  peculiarly  apt  to 
evoke  by  sympathetic  reaction,  of  the  kind  we  studied  in 
Chapter  IV.,  the  same  emption  in  its  object;  and  this 
sympathetically  evoked  tender  emotion  then  finds  its  ob- 
ject most  readil}^  in  the  person  to  whom  it  owes  its  rise. 
But  gratitude  is  not  simply  tender  emotion  sympathet- 
ically excited ;  a  child  or  even  an  animal  may  excite  our 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  137 

tender  emotion  in  this  way ;  e.g.,  it  may  give  us  some- 
thing that  is  utterly  useless  or  embarrassing  to  us,  and 
by  doing  so  may  touch  our  hearts,  as  we  say;  but  I  do 
not  think  that  we  then  feel  gratitude,  even  if  the  gift 
involves  self-sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the  giver.  Mr. 
Shand  maintains  that  into  gratitude  there  enters  some 
sympathetic  sorrow  for  the  person  who  excites  it,  on  ac- 
count of  the  loss  or  sacrifice  sustained  by  him  in  giving 
us  that  for  which  we  are  grateful.  It  is  in  this  way  he 
would  account  for  the  tender  element  in  gratitude ;  for, 
according  to  his  view,  all  tenderness  is  a  blending  of  joy 
and  sorrow,  which  are  for  him  primary  emotions.  But 
surely  we  may  experience  gratitude  for  a  kindness  done 
to  us  that  involves  no  loss  or  sacrifice  for  the  giver,  but 
is  for  him  an  act  of  purely  pleasurable  beneficence.  I 
submit,  then,  that  the  other  element  in  gratitude,  the 
element  that  renders  it  dififerent  from,  and  more  com- 
plex than,  simple  tenderness,  is  that  negative  self-feeling 
which  is  evoked  by  the  sense  of  the  superior  power  of 
another.  The  act  that  is  to  inspire  gratitude  must  make 
us  aware,  not  only  of  the  kindly  feeling,  the  tender  emo- 
tion, of  the  other  towards  us ;  it  must  also  make  us  aware 
of  his  power,  we  must  see  that  he  is  able  to  do  for  us 
something  that  we  cannot  do  for  ourselves.  This  ele- 
ment of  negative  self-feeling,  then,  is  blended  with  ten- 
derness in  true  gratitude,  and  its  impulse,  the  impulse  to 
withdraw  from  the  attention  of,  or  to  humble  oneself  in 
the  presence  of,  its  object,  more  or  less  neutralises  the 
impulse  of  the  tender  emotion  to  approach  its  object; 
the  attitude  typical  and  symbolical  of  gratitude  is  that  of 
kneeHng  to  kiss  the  hand  that  gives.  This  element  of 
negative  self-feeling  renders  gratitude  an  emotion  that 
is  not  purely  pleasurable  to  many  natures,  makes  it  one 
that  a  proud  man  does  not  easily  experience,  and  one  that 


138  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

does  less  to  develop  a  sentiment  of  affection  than  the 
giver  of  good  things  is  apt  to  expect.  And,  if  the  seem- 
ingly beneficent  act  is  done,  not  from  pure  kindliness  or 
tenderness,  but  with  condescension,  if  positive  self-feel- 
ing and  a  gratified  sense  of  power  accompany  or  enter 
into  the  motive  of  the  act,  it>  is  apt  to  evoke  negative 
self-feeling  without  tenderness,  a  negative  self-feeling 
painful  in  quality  that  may  lead  to  the  growth  of  a  senti- 
ment of  dislike  rather  than  of  love. 

Into  reverence  of  the  kind  we  have  considered  nega- 
tive self-feeling  enters  from  two  sources,  as  an  element 
of  admiration  and  again  as  an  element  of  gratitude.  But 
there  is  a  different  kind  of  reverence  into  which  tender- 
ness enters  directly,  and  not  merely  as  an  element  of 
gratitude.  Let  us  imagine  ourselves  standing  before  a 
great  Gothic  cathedral  whose  delicate  and  beautiful 
stonework  is  crumbling  to  dust.  We  shall  probably  feel 
admiration  for  it,  and  the  spectacle  of  its  decay,  or  of  its 
delicate  and  perishable  nature,  awakens  directly  our 
tender  emotion  and  protective  impulse;  i.e.,  we  experi- 
ence a  tender  admiration,  a  complex  emotion  for  which 
we  have  no  special  name.  Now  let  us  imagine  our- 
selves entering  the  cathedral,  passing  between  vast  col- 
umns of  stone  where  the  dim  mysterious  light  is  lost  in 
dark  recesses  and  where  reign  a  stillness  and  a  gloom  like 
that  of  a  great  forest ;  an  element  of  fear  is  added  to  our 
emotion  of  tender  admiration,  and  this  converts  it  to  rev- 
erence (or,  if  our  tender  emotion  does  not  persist,  to 
awe).  This  is  a  reverence  that  has  less  of  the  personal 
note,  because  less  of  negative  self-feeling,  than  that  of 
which  gratitude  is  a  component.^ 

*  One  is  tempted  to  ask,  Was  it  because  the  external  aspect 
of  the  Gothic  cathedral  is  apt  to  fall  short  of  exciting  the  fear 
which  is  essential  to  reverence,  that  in  so  many  cases  the  art- 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  139 

The  history  of  religion  seems  to  show  us  the  gradual 
genesis  of  this  highly  complex  emotion.  Primitive  re- 
ligion seems  to  have  kept  separate  the  superhuman  ob- 
jects of  its  component  emotions,  the  terrible  or  awe-in- 
spiring powers  on  the  one  hand,  the  kindly  beneficent 
powers  that  inspired  gratitude  on  the  other.  And  it  was 
not  until  religious  doctrine  had  undergone  a  long  evolu- 
tion that,  by  a  process  of  syncretism  or  fusion,  it 
achieved  the  conception  of  a  Deity  whose  attributes  were 
capable  of  evoking  all  the  elements  of  the  complex  emo- 
tion of  reverence. 

There  is  another  group  of  complex  emotions  of  which 
anger  and  fear  are  the  most  prominent  constituents. 
When  an  object  excites  our  disgust,  and  at  the  same  time 
our  anger,  the  emotion  we  experience  is  scorn.  The  two' 
impulses  are  apt  to  be  very  clearly  expressed,  the  shrink- 
ing and  aversion  of  disgust,  and  the  impulse  of  anger  to 
attack,  to  strike,  and  to  destroy  its  object.  This  emotion 
is  most  commonly  evoked  by  the  actions  of  other  men,  by 
mean  cruelty  or  underhand  opposition  to  our  efforts;  it 
is  therefore  one  from  which  original  moral  judgments 
often  spring.  It  is,  I  think,  very  apt  to  be  complicated  by 
positive  self-feeling — we  feel  ourselves  magnified  by  the 
presence  of  the  moral  weakness  or  littleness  of  the  other, 
just  as  on  a  lower  plane  the  physical  weakness  or  small- 
ness  of  those  about  one  excites  this  positive  self-feeling, 
with  its  tendency  to  expand  the  chest,  throw  up  the  head, 
and  strut  in  easy  confidence.  The  name  "scorn"  is  often 
applied  to  an  affective  state  of  which  this  emotion  is  an 
element;  but,  if  this  element  is  dominant,  the  emotion  is 
that  we  experience  when  we  are  said  to  despise  another, 

ists   of   the    Middle   Ages   covered   the   exterior   with   grotesque 
and    horrible    figures,    like    those    of    Notre    Dame    of    Paris? 


140  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  its  name  is  contempt,  the  substantive  correspond- 
ing to  the  verb  despise ;  scorn,  then,  is  a  binary  compound 
of  anger  and  disgust,  or  a  tertiary  compound  if  positive 
self- feeling  is  added  to  these ;  while  contempt  is  a  binary 
compound  of  disgust  and  positive  self-feeling,  differing 
from  scorn  in  the  absence  of  the  element  of  anger. 

Fear  and  disgust  are  very  apt  to  be  combined,  as  on 
the  near  view  of  a  snake  or  an  alligator,  and  in  some 
persons  this  binary  emotion  is  provoked  by  a  large  num- 
ber of  animals,  rats,  moths,  worms,  spiders,  and  so  on, 
and  also  by  the  mere  appearance  of  some  men,  though 
more  often  by  their  characters.  It  is  the  emotion  we 
call  loathing,  and,  in  its  most  intense  form,  horror. 
Loathing  is  apt  to  be  complicated  by  wonder,  which  then, 
in  spite  of  the  combined  impulses  of  fear  and  disgust, 
keeps  us  hovering  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  loathsome 
object,  fascinated,  as  we  say,  or  in  horrible  fascination. 
Again,  anger,  fear,  and  disgust  may  be  blended  to 
form  a  tertiary  compound,  to  which,  if  to  any  emotion, 
the  name  "hate"  can  be  most  properly  applied,  although 
it  is  better  to  reserve  this  name  for  the  sentiment  of  in- 
tense dislike  or  hate,  within  the  system  of  which  this 
complex  emotion  is  most  commonly  excited. 
V  Envy  is  allied  to  this  group  of  emotions.  Without 
feeling  confident  as  to  its  analysis,  I  would  suggest  that 
it  is  a  binary  compound  of  negative  self-feeling  and  of 
anger ;  the  former  emotion  being  evoked  by  the  superior 
power  or  position  of  the  object,  the  latter  by  the  sense 
that  the  envied  person  is  excluding  us  from  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  goods  or  the  position  that  he  has  or  occu- 
pies. I  do  not  think  that  true  envy  arises  except  when 
this  sense  of  deprivation  by,  or  opposition  on  the  part 
of,  the  object  is  present ;  as  when,  for  example,  another 
takes  the  prize  we  aimed  at,  or  achieves  the  position  we 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  141 

hoped  to  occupy,  and  therefore  appears  as  an  obstacle 
to  the  realisation  of  our  ends. 


Complex  Emotions  that  Imply  the  Exktence  of  Senti- 
ments 

We  may  now  consider  some  of  the  complex  emotional 
states  that  we  only  experience  in  virtue  of  having  pre- 
viously acquired  some  sentiment  for  the  object  of  the 
emotion. 

Within  the  sentiment  of  love /several  well-defined  com- 
pounds arise.  Reproach  seemis  to  be  a  fusion  of  anger  V 
and  of  tender  emotion.  "Oh,  how  could  you  do  it!"  is 
the  natural  expression  of  reproach.  The  person  who  is 
the  object  of  the  sentiment  of  love  performs  some  action 
which,  if  performed  by  an  indifferent  person,  would  pro- 
voke our  anger  simply;  but  tender  emotion,  which  is 
habitually  evoked  by  the  mere  thought  of  the  object  of 
our  love,  prevents  the  full  development  of  our  anger, 
fuses  with  it  and  softens  it  to  reproach.  This  is  the 
simplest  form,  as  when  a  mother  chides  her  little  son  for 
cruelty  to  an  animal.  A  more  complex  form  arises 
when  the  sentiment  is  reciprocated,  or  supposed  to  be 
reciprocated,  and  its  object  acts  in  a  way  that  seems  to 
show  indifference  to  us.  In  this  case  the  pain  of  the 
wound  given  to  our  self-regarding  sentiment  and  of  the 
check  to  our  tender  emotion  is  the  prominent  feature 
of  the  affective  state  and  overshadows  anger;  perhaps 
the  name  "reproach"  is  most  properly  given  to  this  more 
complex  state. 

The  threat  of  injury  or  destruction  against  the  object 
of  the  sentim'ent  of  love  excites  in  us  anticipatory  pain 
of  its  loss  and  perhaps  also  some  anticipation  of  the 
sympathetic  pain  we  should  feel  if  the  threat  were  real- 


142  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ised ;  and  this  pain,  mingling  with  tender  emotion,  and 
perhaps  with  a  little  anger  against  the  source  of  the 
threatened  harm,  gives  rise  to  the  state  we  call  anxiety 
or  solicitude.  In  popular  language  we  are  said  to  fear 
the  loss  of,  or  injury  to,  the  object;  but  that  fear  en- 
ters into  this  emotion  seems  to  be  very  questionable. 
J  Jealousy  presents  a  difficult  problem.  Animals  and 
very  young  children  are  commonly  said  to  exhibit  jeal- 
ousy. A  favourite  dog  will  be  emotionally  moved  by  the 
sight  of  his  master  fondling  a  kitten  or  another  dog;  he 
will  sometimes  slink  away  and  hide  himself  and  sulk, 
or  he  will  keep  pushing  himself  forward  to  be  caressed, 
with  sidelong  glances  at  the  kitten.  Some  very  young 
children  behave  in  a  similar  way  when  their  mother 
nurses  another  child.  And  in  both  cases  the  jealous 
creature  is  apt  to  exhibit  anger  towards  the  intruder. 
These  facts  do  not  necessitate  the  assumption  that  jeal- 
ousy is  a  primary  emotion,  although,  possibly,  in  ofJer 
fully  to  account  for  them,  we  should  have  to  admit  an 
instinct  of  possession  or  ownership.^  But  even  in  these 
cases  the  existence  of  a  sentiment  of  affection,  however 
rudimentary,  seems  to  be  implied  by  this  conduct.  Cer- 
tainly full-blown  jealousy  is  only  developed  where  some 
sentiment  of  love  or  attachment  exists ;  and  the  condi- 
tions of  its  excitement,  which  constitute  the  object  of  the 
emotion,  are  complex,  being,  not  a  single  person  and  his 
situation  or  actions,  but  the  relations  between  three  per- 
sons. The  presence  of  a  third  person  who  attempts  to 
draw  to  himself  the  regard  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment 
does  not  of  itself  excite  jealousy,  though  it  may  excite 
anger.  Jealousy  involves  anger  of  this  sort  towards  the 
third  person,  but  also  some  painful  check  to  one's  own 

*This  we  may  perhaps  identify  with  the  instinct  of  acquisi- 
tion mentioned  in  Chapter  III. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  143 

tender  emotion  and  sentiment.  It  is,  perhaps,  possible  to 
imagine  a  love  so  wholly  disinterested  that  it  would  de- 
mand no  reciprocation  of  its  tender  feeling.  Such  a  senti- 
ment would  be  incapable  of  jealousy,  and,  perhaps,  a 
mother's  love  sometimes  approximates  to  this  type, 
though  seldom.  The  sentiment  of  love  commonly  feeds  i/,^ 
upon,  is  sustained  by,  and  demandFrecipTQcation,  which,  f/' 
being  given,  excites  in  turn  a  positiv«-6«lf=f£.eling  or  ^ 
elation  that  fuses  with  the  temjgr  pmotion,  adding  great- 
ly to  its  pleasurable  character.  And  the  sentiment  is 
apt  to  demand  for  its_complete  satisfaction  the  maximum 
of  such  reciprocation;  so  rong-as  we  f ppI  that  this  maxi- 
mum  is  not  attained  we  are  uneasy,  we  lack  the  complete 
satisfaction  of  the  self-expansive  impulse,  the  impulse  of 
positive  self-feeling.  And  jealousy  arises  when  the  ob- 
ject of  the  sentiment  gives  IcT'another,  or  merely  is 
thought  to  give  to  another,  any  part  of  the  regard  thus 
claimed  for  the  self.  It  is  thus  an  unstable  state  of 
emotion,  of  which  the  most  constant  element  is  the  pain- 
fully checked  positive  self-feeling,  and  which  tends  to 
oscillate  between  two  poles,  revenge  and  reproach,  ac- 
cording as  one  or  the  other  person  is  more  prominently 
before  consciousness.  In  some  cases  the  tender  emotion 
may  be  at  a  minimum  or  even  perhaps  lacking,  and  the 
sentiment  within  which  this  kind  of  jealousy  arises  is  a 
purely  egoistic  sentiment:  the  object  of  it  is  regarded 
merely  as  a  part  of  one's  property,  a  part  of  one's  larger 
self,  as  one  of  the  props  on  which  one's  pride  is  built 
up;  and  the  marks  of  affection,  or  of  subjection,  of  the 
object  towards  oneself  are  valued  merely  as  contributing 
to  feed  one's  positive  self-feeling  and  self-regarding 
sentiment.  In  this  case  any  expression  of  regard  for  a 
third  person  on  the  part  of  tlie  object  of  the  sentiment 


144  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

provokes  a  jealousy  of  which  the  anger  turns  mainly 

upon  that  object  itself.^ 

/    There  is  an  emotion  that  is  properly  called  vengeful 

•emotion;  it  is  not  merely  anger,  though  anger  may  be 
a  large  element  in  it.  It  is  of  especial  interest  to  the 
moralist,  because  it  has  been  one  of  the  principal  sources 
of  the  institution  of  public  justice,  more  especially  of 
the  branch  dealing  with  personal  injuries;  for  the  pursuit 
and  punishment  of  murderers  by  the  State,  or  by  officers 
of  the  law,  has  only  gradually  replaced  the  system  of 
private  vengeance  and  the  blood-feud.  One  respect  in 
which  the  impulse  of  revenge  differs  from  that  of  simple 
anger  is  its  long  persistence  owing  to  its  being  developed 
in  connection  with  a  sentiment,  generally  the -t  self-re- 
garding sentiment.  The  act  that,  more  certainly  than 
any  other,  provokes  vengeful  emotion  is  the  public  insult; 
which,  if  not  immediately  resented,  lowers  one  in  the 
eyes  of  one's  fellows.  Such  an  insult  calls  out  one's 
positive  self-feeling,  with  its  impulse  to  assert  oneself 
and  to  make  good  one's  value  and  power  in  the  public 
eye.    If  the  insult  is  at  once  avenged,  the  emotion  is  per- 

*^  haps  properly  called  resentment.  It  is  when  immediate 
satisfaction  of  the  impulse  of  angry  self-assertion  is  im- 
possible that  it  gives  rise  to  a  painful  desire;  it  is  then 
the  insult  rankles  in  one's  breast ;  and  this  desire  can  only 
be  satisfied  by  an  assertion  of  one's  power,  by  returning 
an  equally  great  or  greater  insult  or  injury  to  the  of- 
fender— by  "getting  even  with  him."  This  painful  strug- 
gle   of    positive    self-feeling,    maintaining    one's    anger 

*  Tolstoy's  "Kreutzer  Sonata"  is  a  study  of  jealousy  of  this 
type  arising  within  a  sentiment  which  was  certainly  not  love, 
but  was  a  strange  blend  of  hate  with  an  extended  self-regarding 
sentiment.  It  is,  I  think,  obvious  that  jealousy  could  not  arise 
within  a  sentiment  of  hate,  pure  and  simple. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  145 

against  the  offender,  is  vengeful  enxotion  or  the  emotion 
of  revenge. 

Though  the  emotion  is  most  easily  evoked,  perhaps,  by 
public  insult,  it  may  arise  also  from  injury  deliberately 
done  to  any  part  of  the  larger  self,  any  part  of  that  large 
sphere  of  objects  to  which  one's  self-regarding  sentiment 
extends — e.g.,  injury  or  insult  to  one's  family  or  tribe,  or 
to  any  larger  society  with  which  a  man  identifies  him- 
self; this  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  blood-feuds,  where 
the  killing  of  one  member  of  a  family  or  tribe  excites 
this  emotion  in  all  its  other  members,  who  continue  to 
harbour  it  until  they  have  "got  even"  with  the  family 
of  the  slayer  by  killing  him  or  another  of  its  members. 
On  a  still  greater  scale  it  may  be  provoked  as  a  collec- 
tive emotion  throughout  a  nation  by  defeat  in  war.  In 
this  case  the  painful  conation  or  desire  that  arises  from 
the  checked  impulse  of  positive  self-feeling  is  apt  to 
predominate  greatly  over  the  element  of  anger.  The 
attitude  of  the  French  nation  towards  Germany  for  many 
years  after  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  and  of  a  large 
part  of  the  British  nation  towards  the  Boers  after  Ma- 
juba,  was  determined  by  this  emotion  excited  within  the 
system  of  that  most  widely  extended  form  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  which  we  call  the  patriotic  senti- 
ment. 

The  view  that  vengeful  emotion  is  essentially  a  fusion 
of  anger  and  wounded  self-feeling  is  not  generally  ac- 
cepted. The  question  has  been  a  good  deal  discussed  in 
connection  with  the  history  of  punishment.  Dr.  Stein- 
metz,  a  German  authority,^  takes  the  view  that  "revenge 
is  essentially  rooted  in  the  feeling  of  power  and  author- 
ity, its  aim  is  to  enhance  the  'self-feeling'  which  has  been 
lowered  or  degraded  by  the  injury  suffered."     And  he 

*"Die  Entwickelung  der  Strafe." 


146  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

supports  this  view  by  showing  that  primitively  revenge 
is  undirected,  i.e.,  seeks  satisfaction  in  any  violent  asser- 
tion of  one's  power.  The  best  illustration  of  such  un- 
directed revenge  is,  perhaps,  the  running  amok  of  the 
Malay. ^  In  these  cases  the  man  who  has  suffered  injury 
or  insult  does  not  deliberately  plan  out  and  execute  his 
vengeance  on  those  who  have  injured  him.  He  broods 
for  a  time,  no  doubt  filled  with  the  painful  desire  arising 
from  his  instinct  of  self-assertion,  and  then  suddenly 
takes  his  kris  and  runs  through  his  village,  cutting  down 
every  living  being  he  encounters,  until  he  himself  is  slain. 
This  brooding  and  fierce  dejection  produced  by  insult  is 
sometimes  very  intense  among  other  savages.  We  know 
how  Achilles  sulked  in  his  tent,  and  cases  have  been  de- 
scribed of  savages  who  have  lain  prone  on  the  ground 
for  days  together  and  have  even  died  when  this  emotion 
and  its  impulse  could  find  no  satisfaction. 

Professor  Westermarck,^  on  the  other  hand,  maintains 
against  Steinmetz  that  self-feeling  is  not  an  essential 
element  in  vengeful  emotion.  He  writes :  "Resentment 
may  be  described  as  an  aggressive  attitude  of  mind  to- 
wards a  cause  of  pain.  Anger  is  sudden  resentment,  in 
which  the  hostile  reaction  against  the  cause  of  pain  is 
unrestrained  by  deliberation.  Revenge,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  more  deliberate  form  of  non-moral  resent- 
mient,  in  which  the  hostile  reaction  is  more  or  less  re- 
strained by  reason  and  calculation.  It  is  impossible, 
however,  to  draw  any  distinct  limit  between  these  two 
types  of  resentment,  as  also  to  discern  where  an  actual 
desire  to  inflict  pain  comes  in."  ^ 

*An  excellent  account  is  given  by  Mr.  Hugh  Clifford  in  a 
story  called  "The  Amok  of  Dato  Kaya." 

*  "Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,"  Chapter  II. 
'Ibid.,  p.  22. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  147 

This  view  of  anger  and  revenge  and  of  the  relations 
between  them  is  very  different  to  the  one  proposed  in 
the  preceding  pages.  Westermarck  makes  resentment 
the  fundamental  type  of  this  kind  of  emotional  reaction, 
and  distinguishes  two  varieties  of  it,  anger  and  revenge, 
which,  he  holds,  differ  merely  in  that  while  anger  is 
sudden  and  impulsive  resentment,  revenge  is  deliberate 
and  controlled  resentment.  This,  I  venture  to  think, 
is  a  failure  of  analysis  due  to  non-recognition  of  the 
guiding  principle  we  have  followed,  the  principle  that 
the  primary  emotions  are  the  affective  aspects  of  the 
fundamental  instinctive  mental  processes  and  that  all  the 
other  emotions  are  derived  from  them  by  fusion  cr 
blending.  Westermarck  seeks  to  support  his  view  by 
saying  that,  if  one  has  written  a  book  and  it  has  been 
adversely  criticised,  though  our  self-feeling  receives  a 
painful  check  we  do  not  seek  vengeance  on  the  critic  but 
rather  set  out  to  write  a  better  book.  Now,  it  is  dan- 
gerous to  trust  to  the  consideration  of  the  emotions  of 
the  most  cultivated  and  intellectual  class  of  men  in  seek- 
ing light  on  the  origin  of  the  emotions,  but  I  think  that 
most  authors  would  avenge  themselves  on  the  unjust  and 
damaging  critic,  if  they  could  find  an  easy  opportunity ; 
and  our  literary  disputes  frequently  are  but  the  most  re- 
fined expression  of  this  emotion. 

Our  account  of  these  emotions  is  nearer  to  that  of 
Steinmetz,  but  differs  from  it  in  recognising  that  venge- 
ful emotion  is  essentially  a  binary  compound  of  anger 
and  positive  self-feeling.  These  two  elements  may  be 
fused  in  all  proportions,  so  that  revenge  ranges  from  the 
hot,  blind  fury  of  the  Malay  running  amok,  or  from  the 
emotion  of  the  child  furiously  striking  out  at  all  about 
him,  to  the  comparatively  cold,  plotting  revenge  that 
can  postpone  and  pursue  its  satisfaction  for  years.     And 


148  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  distinction  we  make  between  resentment  and  revenge 
is  that  resentment  is  the  fusion  of  anger  and  positive 
self-feeling  immediately  evoked  by  an  act  of  aggression 
and  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  existence  of  a  devel- 
oped self-regarding  sentiment,  whereas  revenge  is  the 
same  emotion  developed  within  the  system  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment — to  which  circumstance  it  owes  its 
persistent  character — with  the  addition  of  painful  feeling 
arising  from  the  continued  thwarting  of  the  two  im- 
pulses. 

The  vengeful  emotion  has  been  regarded  by  some  au- 
thors, e.g.,  by  Dr.  Mercier/  as  the  root  of  moral  indig- 
nation, and  Westermarck  gives  this  position  to  his  "re- 
sentment." He  divides  resentments  into  two  great  class- 
es, the  moral  and  the  non-moral ;  the  non-moral  class 
consisting  of  anger  and  revenge,  the  moral  class  of  moral 
indignation  and  disapproval.  This  classification  seems  to 
involve  a  cross-division  and  a  confusion,  not  only  be- 
cause he  fails  to  seize  the  difference  between  anger  and 
revenge,  but  also  because  he  has  no  criterion  by  which 
to  distinguish  his  moral  from  his  non-moral  resentments. 
Whether  revenge  is  ever  a  moral  emotion,  and  whether 
the  disinterested  anger  against  the  cruel  oppressor  that 
we  have  called  moral  indignation  (the  anger  that  arises, 
in  the  way  we  have  studied  in  Chapter  IIL,  out  of  the 
parental  instinct  exercised  on  behalf  of  the  defenceless 
creature)  is  ever  non-moral — these  are  questions  that 
may  be  left  to  the  moralists  for  decision ;  but  that  these 
two  emotions,  revenge  and  moral  indignation,  are  not 
only  intrinsically  different,  but  that  they  are  evoked  by 
very  different  situations,  seems  as  indisputable  as  that 
while  one  is  essentially  egoistic  the  other  is  essentially 
altruistic.  These  two  emotions  together  are  the  main 
*  "Criminal    Responsibility,"   Oxford,    1905. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  149 

roots  of  all  justice;  neither  alone  would  have  sufficed 
to  engender  a  system  of  law  and  custom  that  would  se- 
cure personal  rights  and  liberties,  and  neither  alone 
would  suffice  to  secure  the  efficient  administration  of 
justice. 

Approval  and  disapproval  have  been  treated  of  by 
Westermarck  and  other  writers  as  emotions.  But  to 
describe  them  as  emotions  is  to  perpetuate  the  chaos  of 
psychological  terminology.^  They  are  not  emotions  but 
judgments,  and  though,  like  other  judgments,  they  are 
often  directly  determined  by  emotions,  that  is  not  always 
the  case ;  for  even  moral  approval  and  disapproval  may 
be  unemotional  intellectual  judgments  made  in  logical 
accordance  with  previously  adopted  principles. 

Shame  is  an  emotion  second  to  none  in  the  extent  of  v 
its  influence  upon  social  behaviour.  There  are  several 
words  closely  connected  with  shame,  the  loose  usage  of 
which  is  a  source  of  great  confusion,  e.g.,  shyness,  bash- 
fulness,  and  modesty ;  these  are  sometimes  said  to  be  the 
names  of  emotions,  sometimes  of  instincts.  But  shy- 
ness and  modesty,  like  courage,  generosity,  and  mean- 
ness, are  qualities  of  character  and  of  conduct  arising 
out  of  the  possession  of  instincts  and  sentiments,  while 
shame  is  a  true  secondary  emotion,  and  bashfulness,  if 
not  an  emotion  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  is  an  emo- 
tional state. 

Shame  has  given  much  trouble  to  psychologists,  be- 
cause it  seems  to  imply  and  to  depend  upon  self-con- 
sciousness, while  yet  the  behaviour  of  animals  and  of 
very  young  children,  whom  we  can  credit  only  with  the 
merest  rudiments  of  self-consciousness,  sometimes  seems 

^  In  a  recent  treatise  on  ethics,  which  makes  a  considerable 
show  of  psychological  precision,  they  are  described  on  one  page 
successively  as  emotions,  sentiments,  feelings,  and  judgments. 


150  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

to  express  shame.  Professor  Baldwin  ^  has  dealt  with 
these  emotions  in  children  more  successfully  perhaps 
than  any  other  author.  He  distinguishes  two  periods  in 
the  development  of  what  he  calls  the  bashfulness  of  the 
child ;  an  earlier  period,  during  which  what  he  calls  or- 
ganic bashfulness  is  evoked  by  the  presence  of  strangers 
— this  organic  bashfulness,  which  is  shown  by  most  chil- 
dren in  their  first  year,  he  identifies  with  fear;  a  later 
period  in  which  the  child  makes  efforts  to  draw  atten- 
tion to  himself — this  he  calls  the  period  of  true  bash- 
fulness. Baldwin's  description  of  the  facts  seems  to  be 
accurate,  but  he  fails  to  show  the  origin  of  the  bashful- 
ness he  describes  and  fails  also  to  show  its  relation  to 
shame. 

The  way  has  been  prepared  for  the  solution  of  these 
and  other  difficulties  connected  with  shame  by  our  recog- 
nition of  positive  and  negative  self-feeling  as  primary 
emotions,  and  by  our  acceptance  of  the  important  dis- 
tinction between  emotions  and  sentiments  that  Shand  has 
so  clearly  pointed  out.  The  earliest  reactions  of  a  child 
towards  strangers  are,  no  doubt,  symptoms  of  fear,  as 
Baldwin  says.  But  truly  bashful  behaviour,  which  is 
not  usually  displayed  until  the  third  year,  has  nothing 
to  do  with  fear,  and  is,  I  submit,  symptomatic  of  a  strug- 
gle between  the  two  opposed  impulses  of  the  instincts  of 
self-display  and  self-abasement,  with  their  emotions  of 
positive  and  negative  self-feeling:  a  struggle  rather  than 
a  fusion,  for  the  impulses  and  emotions  of  the  two  in- 
stincts are  so  directly  opposed  that  fusion  is  hardly  pos- 
sible. Consider  the  little  boy  of  three  who,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  stranger,  hides  quietly  behind  his  mother's  skirt 
with  head  hung  low,  averted  face,  and  sidelong  glances, 

*  "Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  in  Mental  Bevelop- 
ment,"  chap,  vi.,  London,   1902. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  151 

until  suddenly  he  emerges,  saying,  "Can  you  do  this?" 
and  turns  a  somersault  at  the  ^eet  of  the  stranger.  In 
adults  the  slightly  painful  agitation  that  most  of  us  feel 
when  we  have  to  figure  before  an  audience  seems  to  be 
of  the  same  nature  as  this  childish  bashfulness,  and  to 
be  due  to  a  similar  struggle  between  these  two  impulses 
and  emotions.  Our  negative  self-feeling  is  evoked  by 
the  presence  of  persons  whom  we  regard  as  our  supe- 
riors, or  who,  by  reason  of  their  number  and  of  their 
forming  a  collective  whole,  are  able  to  make  on  us  an 
impression  of  power ,  but  it  is  not  until  our  positive  self- 
feeling  is  also  excited,  until  we  feel  ourselves  called 
upon  to  make  a  display  of  ourselves  or  our  powers,  to 
address  the  audience,  to  play  a  part  as  an  equal  among 
the  superior  beings,  or  even  merely  to  walk  across  the 
room  before  the  eyes  of  a  crowd,  that  we  experience  the 
slightly  painful,  slightly  pleasurable,  but  often  very  in- 
tense, emotional  agitation  which  is  properly  called  bash- 
fulness.  Whether  this  state  is  at  all  possible  in  the  ab- 
sence of  self-consciousness  it  is  difficult  to  say.  For  al- 
though either  instinct  may  be  excited  quite  independent- 
ly of,  and  prior  to  the  rise  of,  self-consciousness,  it 
would  seem  that  the  idea  of  the  self  and  some  develop- 
ment of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  are  necessary  con- 
ditions of  the  conjunction  of  the  two  opposed  emotions; 
in  their  absence  one  of  the  opposed  emotions  would  sim- 
ply preclude  or  drive  out  the  other.  In  situations  that 
evoke  bashfulness  the  negative  self-feeling  is,  perhaps, 
as  a  rule,  more  directly  induced  by  the  presence  of  the 
other  person  or  persons,  while  the  positive  self-feeling 
is  more  dependent  on  the  idea  of  the  self  and  on  the 
egoistic  sentiment. 

But  the  state  of  bashfulness  we  have  considered  is  not 
shame.     Shame,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  is  only 


152  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

possible  when  the  self-regarding  sentiment  has  become 
well  developed  about  the  idea  of  the  self,  its  attributes 
and  powers.  Then  any  exhibition  of  the  self  to  others  as 
deficient  in  these  powers  and  attributes,  which  constitute 
the  self  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  object  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment,  provokes  shame.  The  self  may  appear  defec- 
tive or  inferior  to  others  in  all  other  reepects  and  no 
shame,  though  perhaps  bashfulness,  will  be  induced. 
Thus  a  man  whose  self,  as  object  of  his  self-respect,  in^ 
eludes  courage  or  athletic  prowess  will  feel  shame  if  he 
appears  cowardly  or  bodily  incapable ;  whereas  most 
women,  whose  selves  as  objects  of  their  self-regarding 
sentiments  have  not  the  attribute  of  physical  courage  or 
athletic  capacity,  will  run  away  from  a  mouse  or  show 
themselves  incapable  of  jumping  over  a  fence  without  the 
least  pang  of  shame. 

Shame,  then,  is  not  merely  negative  self-feeling,  nor 
is  it  merely  negative  and  positive  self-feeling  struggling 
together;  it  is  bashfulness  qualified  by  the  pain  of  baf- 
fled positive  self-feeling,  whose  impulse  is  strong  and 
persistent  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  emotion  is  excited 
within  the  system  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment.  The 
conduct  that  excites  our  shame  is  that  which  lowers 
us  in  the  eyes  of  our  fellows,  so  that  we  feel  it  to  be 
impossible  for  our  positive  self-feeling  to  attain  satisfac- 
tion. Shame  thus  differs  from  vengeful  emotion,  which 
also  is  provoked  by  a  blow  to  our  self-esteem,  in  that  the 
blow  comes,  not  from  another,  but  from  ourselves ;  or 
rather,  though  it  comes  from  others,  it  is  occasioned  by 
our  own  conduct,  and  therefore,  though  the  check  to  our 
impulse  of  self-assertion  may  provoke  our  anger,  this 
anger,  unlike  that  of  vengeful  emotion,  is  directed 
against  ourselves,  and  is  therefore  incapable  of  finding 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  153 

satisfaction.  Hence  the  pain  of  the  check  to  our  positive 
self-feeling,  which,  when  it  comes  from  another,  may 
find  some  relief  in  the  active  pursuit  of  vengeance,  can 
in  this  case  find  no  relief  but  is  augmented  by  the  pain 
of  baffled  anger.  Shame,  then,  seems  to  be  closely  allied 
to  vengeful  emotion  and,  especially  in  brutal  natures, 
is  apt  to  be  accompanied  by  it ;  but  it  differs  from  venge- 
ful emotion  in  two  respects — first,  the  check  to  positive 
self-feeling  not  only  gives  a  rise  to  a  painful  and  angry 
desire  for  self-assertion,  but  there  is  no  possibility  of 
satisfaction  for  this  desire,  of  "getting  even"  with  the 
person  from  whom  the  check  comes,  because  that  person 
is  oneself;  secondly,  there  is  an  element  of  negative  self- 
feeling,  with  its  impulse  to  withdraw  oneself  from  the 
notice  of  others,  evoked  by  the  recognition  of  one's  own 
shortcoming.  In  revenge  in  its  purest  form  this  element 
of  negative  self-feeHng  has  no  part;  but,  if  in  the  face' 
of  insult  or  injury  one  has  behaved  in  a  cowardly  man- 
ner, it  may  complicate  the  emotional  state,  which  then 
becomes  an  imperfect  blend  of  revenge  and  shame. 

Mere  bashfulness  very  readily  passes  into  shame;  for, 
when  in  that  state,  one  is  acutely  aware  of  one's  self  in 
relation  to  others,  and  therefore  one  notices  at  once  any 
slight  defect  of  one's  conduct,  and  any  censure  or  dis- 
approval passed  upon  it  occasions  a  painful  check  to 
positive  self-feeling  that  converts  bashfulness  to  shame. 
The  full  understanding  of  shame  implies  a  study  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment,  which,  however,  we  must  post- 
pone to  a  later  page. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  inquire  into  the  nature 
of  sorrow  and  joy,  which  we  have  rejected  from  our  list 
of  primary   emotions,   because,   as   was   said,   they   are 


154  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

/algedomdj  or  pleasure-pain  qualifications  of  emotional 
st^tes-Tather  than  emotions  capable  of  standing  alone. 

First,  a  remark  must  be  made  upon  one  feature  of 
emotions  that  has  been  too  much  neglected.  Apart  from 
the  pleasure  that  attends  the  successful,  and  the  pain  that 
attends  the  unsuccessful,  conation  or  striving  towards  an 
end  involved  in  every  emotional  state,  each  primary  emo- 
tion seems  to  have  a  certain  intrinsic  feeling-tone,  just  as 
the  sensations  that  are  synthesised  in  perception  have 
their  feeling-tone  independently  of  the  success  or  lack 
of  success  of  the  perceptual  conation.  And  the  intrinsic 
feeling-tone  of  the  emotions  seems  to  follow  the  same 
rule  as  that  of  sensations,  namely,  that  with  increase  of 
intensity  of  the  emotion  pleasant  tends  to  give  way  to 
unpleasant  feeling-tone ;  so  that,  while  at  moderate  in- 
tensities some  are  pleasant  and  others  unpleasant,  at  the 
highest  intensity  all  alike  become  unpleasant  or  painful ; 
and,  perhaps,  at  the  lowest  intensity  all  are  pleasant.  If 
that  is  the  case,  then,  like  the  sensations,  the  emotions 
differ  greatly  from  one  another  in  regard  to  the  position 
of  the  neutral  point  of  feeling-tone  in  the  scales  of  their 
intensities.  Thus  fear  at  low  intensity  does  but  add  a 
pleasurable  zest  to  any  pursuit,  as  we  see  especially  clear- 
ly in  children,  sportsmen,  and  adventurous  spirits  gen- 
erally; whereas  at  high  intensity  it  is  the  most  horrible 
of  all  experiences.  On  the  other  hand,  tender-emotion 
is  pleasantly  toned,  save,  perhaps,  at  its  highest  intensity ; 
and  positive  self-feeling  is  even  more  highly  pleasurable 
and  remains  so,  probably,  even  at  its  highest  intensity. 

How,  then,  are  we  to  regard  joy  and  sorrow?  Is  joy 
mere  pleasure,  and  are  the  two  words  synonymous  ?  Ob- 
viously not;  joy  is  universally  recognised  as  something 
more  than,  and  higher  than,  mere  pleasure.     Whenever 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIIMENTS  155 

did  poet  write  of  pleasure  in  the  lofty  strain  of  the  beau- 
tiful lines  that  Coleridge  wrote  of  joy? 

"O  pure  of  heart,  thou  necdst  not  ask  of  me 
What  this  strong  music  in  the  soul  may  be! 
What,  and  wherein  it  doth  exist. 
This  light,  this  glory,  this  fair  luminous  mist. 
This  beautiful  and  beauty-making  power, 
Joy,  virtuous  lady!    Joy  that  ne'er  was  given 
Save  to  the  pure,  and  in  their  purest  hour. 

Joy  is  the  sweet  voice,  Joy  the  luminous  cloud — 

We  in  ourselves  rejoice! 

And  thence  flows  all  that  charms  or  ear  or  sight, 

All  melodies  the  echoes  of  that  voice. 

All  colours  a  suflfusion  from  that  light." 

Clearly  joy  is  more  than  pleasure,  however  intense. 
Let  us  examine  what  is  by  common  consent  the  purest 
type  of  joy— the  joy  of  a  loving  mother  as  she  tends  her 
beautiful  and  healthy  child.  In  this  case  many  factors 
contribute  to  produce  the  joyful  emotion:  (i)  There  is 
aesthetic  pleasure  in  the  contemplation  of  the  beauty  of 
the  object,  a  pleasure  that  any  onlooker  may  share;  (2) 
sympathetic  pleasure  reflected  by,  or  induced  in,  the 
mother  from  her  smiling  child;  (3)  tender-emotion,  in 
itself  pleasantly  toned  and  progressively  attaining  satis- 
faction ;  (4)  positive  self-feeling,  also  intrinsically  pleas- 
ant and  also  attaining  an  ideal  satisfaction;  for  the  moth- 
er is  proud  of  her  child  as  an  evidence  of  her  own  worth ; 
(5)  each  of  these  two  primary  emotions  of  the  mother  is 
developed  within  the  system  of  a  strong  sentiment,  the 
one  within  the  system  of  her  love  for  her  child,  the 
other  within  the  system  of  her  regard  for  herself,  the 
two  strongest  sentiments  of  her  nature,  which,  in  so  far 
as  the  child  is  identified  with  herself,  become  welded 
together  to  constitute  a  master  sentiment  or  passion ;  this 


y 


156  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

renders  the  emotions  more  intense  and  more  enduring; 
(6)  the  fact  that  the  emotions  are  not  aroused  as  merely 
isolated  experiences  by  some  casually  presented  object, 
but  are  developed  within  strongly  organised  and  endur- 
ing sentiments  gives  them  a  prospective  reference ;  they 
project  themselves  into  an  indefinitely  prolonged  future, 
and  so  hope  or  pleasant  anticipation  is  added  to  the  com- 
plex. 

Joy  is  always,  as  in  this  instance,  a  complex  emotional 
state,  in  which  one  or  more  of  the  primary  emotions, 
developed  within  the  system  of  a  strong  sentiment,  plays 
an  essential  part.  We  ought,  then,  properly  to  speak, 
not  of  joy,  but  of  joyous  emotion.  And  if,  by  an  illegit- 
imate effort  of  abstraction,  we  should  seek  to  separate 
joy  from  the  emotions  with  which  it  forms  an  insep- 
arable whole,  we  should  have  to  say  that  it  is  pleasure, 
but  pleasure  of  a  high  type,  pleasure  of  complex  origin, 
arising  from  the  harmonious  operation  of  one  or  more 
sentiments  that  constitute  a  considerable  feature  of  the 
total  mental  organisation. 

Reflexion  upon  sorrow  yields  similar  results.  Take 
the  parallel  case  of  the  mother  sorrowing  for  the  loss 
of  her  child.  There  is  tender  emotion,  which,  though 
intrinsically  of  pleasant  feeling-tone,  is  in  this  case  pain- 
ful because  its  impulse  is  baffled  and  cannot  attain  more 
than  the  most  scanty  and  imperfect  satisfaction  in  little 
acts,  such  as  the  laying  of  flowers  on  the  grave ;  and  this 
emotion,  being  developed  within  a  strong  sentiment,  is 
persistent,  and  the  pain  of  its  ineffectual  impulse  con- 
stantly recurs :  again,  pride  and  hope  have  been  dashed 
down  and  few  can  avoid  some  negative  self-feeling  un- 
der such  conditions,  for  a  part  of  the  larger  self  has 
been  torn  away,  and  some  thought  of  some  effort  that 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  157 

might  have  been  made  but  was  not  is  very  apt  to  increase 
the  insensity  of  this  painful  negative  self-feeling. 

In  this  case,  then,  we  should  properly  speak  of  a  sor- 
rowful emotion,  which  emotion  is  a  painfully  toned 
binary  compound  of  tender  emotion  and  negative  self- 
feeling.  And  as  in  this  case,  so  in  every  other,  sorrow 
implies  one  or  more  of  the  primary  emotions  excited 
within  a  sentiment.  Perhaps  in  every  case  tender  emo- 
tion must  be  an  element ;  for,  take  away  the  tender  emo- 
tion and  only  painful  negative  self-feeling  or  humiliation 
remains ;  take  away  that  emotion  also  and  nothing  re- 
mains but  some  painful  depressed  feeling  that  cannot 
properly  be  called  sorrow,  though  it  might  perhaps  be 
called  grief.  Some  such  state  as  this  last  might  be  pro- 
duced by  an  event  that  should  destroy  the  sentiment  of 
love  at  the  same  time  that  it  removed  its  object;  e.g.,  a 
friend,  the  object  of  a  strong  sentiment,  suddenly  by 
some  cruel  act  shows  us  that  he  has  renounced  our 
friendship  and,  at  the  same  time,  that  he  is  unworthy 
of  it.  Under  these  conditions  might  be  realised  a  state  of 
intolerable  pain,  a  state  almost  devoid  of  impulse  or  de- 
sire, that  might  be  called  grief,  but  not  sorrow.  But  it 
is  hard  to  imagine  even  under  such  conditions  a  state 
without  some  anger,  some  resentment  or  disgust,  and  the 
corresponding  impulse.  In  so  far  as  grief  is  properly 
distinguishable  from  sorrow,  it  differs  in  having  less  of 
tender  emotion  and  more  of  anger,  as  when  the  bereaved 
and  grief-stricken  father  curses  God,  or  the  Fates,  or  the 
Universe. 

In  this  connection  we  may  consider  the  difference  be- 
tween pity  and  sorrow.  Pity  in  its  simplest  form  is 
tender  emotion  tinged  with  sympathetically  induced  pain. 
It  differs  from  sorrow,  which  also  is  essentially  a  pain- 
ful tender  emotion,  in  the  sympathetic  character  of  the 


iS8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

pain,  and  in  that  it  does  not  imply  the  existence  of  any 
sentiment  of  affection  or  love,  as  sorrow  does,  and  is 
therefore  a  more  transient  experience,  and  one  with  less 
tendency  to  look  before  and  after.  There  is  also,  of 
course,  a  sorrowful  pity,  as  when  one  watches  the  pain- 
ful and  mortal  illness  of  a  dear  friend.  In  this  case 
there  is  tender  emotion  and  there  is  sympathetically  in- 
duced pain  which  makes  the  state  one  of  pity ;  but  there 
is  also  pain  arising  from  the  prospect  of  the  loss  of  the 
object  of  our  sentiment  of  love,  which  makes  the  emotion 
a  sorrowful  one.  That  sorrow  does  not  necessarily  in- 
clude an  element  of  sympathetic  pain  is  clearly  shown  by 
the  sorrow  of  those  who  have  lost  a  loved  one  whom 
they  sincerely  believe  to  have  entered  on  a  happier  life. 
The  pain  of  sorrow  is,  then,  a  self-regarding  pain,  where- 
as the  pain  of  pity  is  not;  hence  pity  is  rightly  regarded 
as  the  nobler  emotion. 

Before  passing  on  from  this  subject,  it  seems  worth 
'*  while  to  inquire.  What  is  happiness?  Is  happiness  mere- 
ly pleasure  or  a  sum  of  pleasures,  and  if  not,  what  is  it? 
If  only  moralists  had  condescended  to  ask  this  question 
earnestly  and  had  found  the  answer  to  it,  how  much  of 
the  energy  devoted  to  ethical  discussion  during  the  last 
century  might  profitably  have  been  turned  into  other 
channels !  The  utilitarians  constantly  assumed  that  hap- 
piness and  pleasure  are  to  be  identified,  and  used  hap- 
piness and  sum  of  pleasures  as  synonymous  terms,  gen- 
erally without  pausing  to  consider,  or  to  seek  to  justify, 
this  identification.  The  principle  that  the  ultimate  test 
of  the  relative  worth  of  different  kinds  of  conduct  and 
character  must  be  the  estimation  of  the  degree  in  which 
they  contribute  to  bring  about  the  greatest  happiness  of 
the  greatest  number,  this  principle,  which  if  the  phrase 
"greatest  number"  is  taken  as  referring  to  the  remoter, 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  159 

as  well  as  to  the  immediate,  future  cannot  easily  be  re- 
jected, was  treated  as  identical  with  the  maxim  that 
the  aim  of  all  conduct  should  be  to  increase  the  sum 
of  pleasures  to  the  greatest  possible  extent;  and  this 
maxim,  illuminated  by  Bentham's  dictum  that  "pushpin 
is  as  good  as  poetry  provided  the  pleasure  be  as  great," 
was  naturally  repulsive  to  many  of  the  finer  natures;  it 
provoked  in  them  a  reaction  and  drove  them  to  grope 
among  obscure  and  mystical  ideas  for  their  ethical  foim- 
dations,  and  so  has  greatly  delayed  the  general  acceptance 
of  the  great  truth  embodied  in  the  utilitarian  doctrines. 
J.  S.  Mill,  like  the  rest,  identified  happiness  with  sum  of 
pleasures,  and  attempted  to  improve  the  position  by  rec- 
ognising higher  and  lower  qualities  of  pleasure,  and  by 
regarding  the  higher  as  indefinitely  more  desirable  than 
the  lower.  This  was  an  effort  in  the  right  direction,  but 
so  long  as  happiness  is  regarded  as  merely  a  sum  of 
pleasures,  whether  higher  or  lower,  and  pleasure  and 
pain  as  the  only  motives  to  action,  the  utilitarian  posi- 
tion is  untenable.^ 

It  is,  I  think,  indisputable  that  a  man  may  be  unhappy\ 
while  he  actually  experiences  pleasure,  and  that  he  might] 
experience  one  pleasure  after  another  throughout  a  con- 
siderable period  without  ceasing  to  be  unhappy.  Consider 
the  case  of  a  man  whose  lifelong  ambition  and  hopes  have 
recently  been  dashed  to  the  ground.  If  he  were  fond  of 
music,  he  might,  when  the  first  shock  of  disappointment 
had  passed  away,  attend  a  concert  and  derive  pleasure 
from  the  music,  or  indulge  in  other  pleasures,  and  yet  be 
continuously  unhappy.  No  doubt  his  unhappiness  would 
make  it  more  difficult  to  find  pleasure  and  might  make 

^  Even  in  so  recent  and  excellent  a  treatise  as  Dr.  Rashdall's 
"Theory  of  Good  and  Evil"  this  identification  of  pleasure  with 
happiness  is  frequently  repeated,  verbally  at  least. 


i6o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

his  pleasure  thin  in  quality ;  but  the  two  modes  of  expe- 
rience are,  though  antagonistic,  not  absolutely  incompat- 
ible and  mutually  exclusive. 
I  In  a  similar  way,  a  man  may  be  happy  while  experi- 
yencing  pain,  not  merely  physical  pain,  but  pain  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word — i.e.,  painful  feeling.  Imagine 
the  case  of  a  man  of  fine  nature  who  in  the  past  in  a 
moment  of  weakness  has  done  a  mean  thing,  but  who  by 
his  efforts  has  completely  repaired  the  injury  done,  has 
set  his  relations  to  others  on  an  entirely  satisfactory  foot- 
ing, and  has  becom.e  thoroughly  happy.  If  his  mind  goes 
back  to  that  act  of  meanness,  he  will  have  a  painful  feel- 
ing and  yet  he  may  continue  to  be  happy  without  inter- 
mission. Or  imagine  another,  perhaps  a  clearer,  case — 
that  of  a  person  who  finds  an  exalted  happiness  in  seek- 
ing to  relieve  the  lot  of  the  sick  and  distressed.  Such  a 
person  will  often  feel  sympathetic  pain,  but,  so  long  as  he 
knows  he  is  doing  good  to  others,  he  is  happy  and  does 
not  cease  to  be  happy  in  those  moments  of  pitiful  emo- 
tion. We  may  even  believe  that  the  cause  of  such  sym- 
pathetic pain  may  increase  the  happiness  of  him  who 
feels  it.  Suppose  that  to  a  tender-hearted,  sympathetic 
person,  who  finds  his  happiness  in  doing  good  to  others, 
a  friend  pours  out  his  troubles  in  a  moment  of  confi- 
dence; the  recipient  feels  sympathetic  pain,  but  his  hap- 
piness is  at  the  same  time  increased  because  he  sees  that 
his  friend  confides  in  him  and  finds  relief  in  doing  so. 
Do  not  facts  of  this  order  show  clearly  that  happiness 
is  no  mere  sum  of  pleasures?  What,  then,  is  it?  It 
''may,  I  think,  be  indirectly  defined  by  saying  that  hap- 
piness is  related  to  joy  in  the  same  way  that  joy  is  re- 
lated to  pleasure.^  Pleasure  is  a  qualification  of  con- 
sciousness of  momentary  duration  or,  at  most,  of  a  fleet- 
'  Cp.  p.  155. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS         i6i 

ing  character,  and  it  arises  from  some  mental  process  that 
involves  but  a  mere  fragment  of  one's  whole  being.    Joy 
arises  from  the  harmonious  operation  of  an  organised 
system  or  sentiment  that  constitutes  a  considerable  fea- 
ture or  part  of  one's  whole  being;  it  has,  therefore,  po- 
tentially at  least,  a  greater  persistence  and  continuity  and 
a  deeper  resonance ;  it  is,  as  it  were,  more  massive  than 
pleasure;  it  is  more  intimately  and  essentially  a  part  of 
oneself,  so  that  one  cannot  stand  aside  and  contemplate 
it  in  philosophic  or  depreciatory  detachment,  as  one  may 
contemplate  one's  pleasures.     Happjness_arises  from  the  //       j 
harmonious  operation  of  all  the  sentiments  of  a  well-or-^       si 
ganised  and  unified  personality,  one  in  which  the  prm-     ^-^ 
cipal_sentiments  support  one  another  in  a  succession  oF         -^ 
actions  all  of  which  tend  towardsthe  same  or  closjely  * 

allied  and  harmonious  ends.  Hence  the  richer,  the  more 
highly  developed,  the  more  completely  unified  or  inte- 
grated is  the  personality,  the  more  capable  is  it  of  sus- 
tained happiness  in  spite  of  inter-current  pains  of  all 
sorts.  In  the  child  or  in  the  adult  of  imperfectly  devel- 
oped and  unified  personality,  the  pleasure  or  pain  of  the 
moment  is  apt  to  fill  or  dominate  the  whole  of  conscious- 
ness as  a  simple  wave  of  feeling,  whereas  in  the  per- 
fected personality  it  appears  as  a  mere  ripple  on  the 
surface  of  a  strong  tide  that  sets  steadily  in  one  direction. 
If  this  account  of  happiness  is  correct,  it  follows  that 
to  add  to  the  sum  of  happiness  is  not  merely  to  add  to 
the  sum  of  pleasures,  but  is  rather  to  contribute  to  the 
development  of  higher  forms  of  personality,  personalities 
capable,  not  merely  of  pleasure,  as  the  animals  are,  but, 
of  happiness.  If  this  conclusion  is  sound,  it  is  of  no 
small  importance  to  the  social  sciences ;  it  goes  far  to 
reconcile  the  doctrine  of  such  moralists  as  T.  H.  Green 
with  that  of  the  more  enlightened  utilitarians;  for  the 


i62  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

one  party  insists  that  the  proper  end  of  moral  effort  is  the 
development  of  personalities,  the  other  that  it  is  the  in- 
crease of  happiness,  and  these  we  now  see  to  be  identicaj 
ends. 

In  Chapter  III.  it  was  said  that  the  definition  of  emo- 
tion there  adopted  necessitates  the  exclusion  of  sur- 
^  prise,  as  well  as  of  joy  and  sorrow,  from  the  list  of 
true  and  primary  emotions.  This  is  because  surprise  is 
an  affective  state  that  implies  no  corresponding  instinct 
i^nd  has  no  specific  conative  tendency.  It  is  merely  a 
condition  of  general  excitement  which  supervenes  upon 
any  totally  unexpected  and  violent  mental  impression; 
or  perhaps  it  is  more  accurate  to  say  that  it  is  produced 
by  an  impression  which  is  contrary  to  anticipation,  and 
to  which,  therefore,  we  cannot  immediately  adjust  our- 
selves, which  does  not  evoke  at  once  an  appropriate 
emotional  and  conative  response.  It  is  the  momentary 
state  of  confused  excitement  which  intervenes  between 
the  reception  of  the  impression  and  the  assumption  of 
the  appropriate  attitude  towards  it,  a  moment  of  conflict 
and  confusion  between  the  habitual  anticipatory  attitude 
determined  by  the  course  of  previous  experience  and  the 
new  attitude  provoked  by  the  unusual  course  of  events. 

APPENDIX   TO    CHAPTER  V 

In  the  previous  editions  no  attempt  was  made  to  deal  with 
the  emotion  of  remorse.  The  following  note  is  added  to  make 
good  this  serious  omission. 

^  Remorse  is  an  emotion  which  has  been  commonly  regarded  by 
moralists  as  the  most  intense  of  the  effects  produced  by  the 
activity  of  that  peculiar  entity  "the  conscience."  It  is  a  complex 
emotional  state  implying  the  existence  of  a  well-developed  self- 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  163 

regarding  sentiment  and,  generally,  of  moral  sentiments.  It 
arises  upon  the  recollection  of  some  past  action  that  one  deeply 
regrets ;  like  all  regret  it  is  painful  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
impulse  or  desire,  which  is  the  root  of  it  and  which  may  be 
the  impulse  of  any  one  of  several  instincts,  is  directed  towards 
the  past  rather  than  towards  the  future,  and  is  therefore  seen 
to  be  necessarily  and  for  ever  baffled.  But  it  differs  from  other 
forms  of  regret  in  that  the  regretted  event  is  one  brought  about 
by  one's  own  action.  Hence  the  anger  which  arises  from  the 
baffled  desire  is  directed  against  oneself,  and  can  find  no  satis- 
faction in  the  utterance  of  reproaches  or  curses ;  for  these,  be- 
ing directed  against  oneself,  do  but  add  to  the  painfulness  of 
the  whole  complex  state;  and  even  the  doing  of  penance  (i.e., 
the  infliction  of  punishment  upon  oneself),  though  it  yields 
some  satisfaction  to  the  baffled  impulse,  does  not  heal  the  wound 
to  one's  self-regard  caused  by  the  recognition  of  the  irrevocable 
failure  to  realise  one's  ideal  of  self.  Through  this  last  factor 
remorse  is  closely  allied  with  shame,  and  it  might  perhaps  be 
adequately  defined  as  shameful  and  angry  regret. 


1.4 


>1 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS 

f\\T^  have  seen  that  a  sentiment  is  an  organised  sys- 

i  VV     tern  of  emotional  dispositions  centred  about  the 

Vdea  of  some  object.    The  organisation  of  the  sentiments 

in  the  developing  mind  is  determined  by  the  course  of 

experience ;  that  is  to  say,  the  sentiment  is  a  growth  in  the 

^structure  of  the  mind  that  is  not  natively  given  in  the 

inherited  constitution.    This  is  certainly  true  in  the  main, 

though  the  maternal  sentiment  might  almost  seem  to  be 

innate;  but  we  have  to  remember  that  in   the  human 

mother  this  sentiment  may,  and  generally  does,  begin 

to  grow  up  about  the  idea  of  its  object,  before  the  child 

is  born.^ 

The  growth  of  the  sentiments  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance for  the  character  and  conduct  of  individuals  and 
of  societies;  it  is  the  organisation  of  the  affective  and 
Iconative  life.    In  the  absence  of  sentiments  our  emotional 
^life  would  be  a  mere  chaos,  without  order,  consistency, 

*  In  a  recent  article  criticising  M.  Ribot's  book  "Les  Passions" 
("Mind,"  vol.  xvi.,  p.  502)  Mr.  Shand  has  suggested  that  the  sen- 
timent of  love  is  innately  organised.  I  cannot  see  any  sufficient 
grounds  for  accepting  this  suggestion,  and  I  believe  that  any 
such  assumption  vi^ill  raise  more  difficulties  than  it  solves.  In 
previous  chapters  I  have  suggested  that  certain  of  the  in- 
stincts may  have  peculiarly  intimate  innate  relations,  that,  e.g., 
the  instinct  of  pugnacity  is  thus  specially  intimately  connected 
with  the  maternal  instinct  and  with  the  sex  instinct  of  the 
male.     But  even  this  seems  to  me  very  questionable, 

164 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  165 

or  continuity  of  any  kind;  and  all  our  social  relations 
and  conduct,  being  based  on  the  emotions  and  their  im- 
pulses, would  be  correspondingly  chaotic,  unpredictable, 
and  unstable.  It  is  only  through  the  systematic  organi- 
sation of  the  emotional  dispositions  in  sentiments  that 
the  volitional  control  of  the  immediate  promptings  of  the 
emotions  is  rendered  possible.  Again,  our  judgments  of 
value  and  of  merit  are  rooted  in  our  sentiments ;  and  our 
moral  principles  have  the  same  source,  for  they  are 
formed  by  our  judgments  of  moral  value. 

In  dealing  with  the  emotions,  we  named  and  classed 
them  according  to  their  nature  as  states  of  affective  con- 
sciousness and  as  tendencies  to  action ;  and  we  may  at- 
tempt to  name  and  classify  the  sentiments  also  according 
to  the  nature  of  the  emotional  dispositions  that  enter  into 
the  composition  of  each  one.  But  since,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  same  emotional  dispositions  may  enter  into  the  com- 
position of  very  different  sentiments,  we  can  carry  the 
naming  and  classification  of  them  but  a  Httle  way  on  this 
principle,  and  we  have  accordingly  but  very  general 
names  for  the  sentiments.  We  have  the  names  love, 
liking,  affection,  attachment,  denoting  those  sentiments 
that  draw  one  towards  their  objects,  generally  in  virtue 
of  the  tender  emotion  with  its  protective  impulse  which 
is  their  principal  constituent ;  and  we  have  the  names 
hate,  dislike,  and  aversion,  for  those  that  lead  us  to 
shrink  from  their  objects,  those  whose  attitude  or  ten- 
dency is  one  of  aversion,  owing  to  the  fear  or  disgust 
that  is  the  dominant  element  in  their  composition.  The 
two  names  love  and  hate,  and  the  weaker  but  otherwise 
synonymous  terms  liking  and  dislike,  affection  and  aver- 
sion, are  very  general ;  each  stands  for  a  large  class  of 
sentiments  of  varied,  though  similar,  composition;  the 
character  common  to  the  one  class  being  the  fundamental 


i66  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

tendency  to  seek  the  object  and  to  find  pleasure  in  its 
presence,  while  that  of  the  other  class  is  the  tendency  to 
avoid  the  object  and  to  be  pained  by  its  presence. 

We  must,  I  think,  recognise  a  third  principal  variety  of 
sentiment  which  is  primarily  the  self-regarding  senti- 
ment, and  is,  perhaps,  best  called  respect.  Respect  dif- 
fers from  love  in  that,  while  tender  emotion  occupies 
the  principal  place  in  love,  it  is  lacking,  or  occupies  an 
altogether  subordinate  position,  in  the  sentiment  of  re- 
spect. The  principal  constituents  of  respect  are  the  dis- 
positions of  positive  and  negative  self-feeling;  and  re- 
spect is  clearly  marked  off  from  love  by  the  fact  that 
shame  is  one  of  its  strongest  emotions. 

It  may  be  asked — If  respect  is  thus  a  sentiment  that 
has  for  its  most  essential  constituents  these  self-regard- 
ing emotions,  how  can  we  properly  be  said  to  entertain 
respect  for  others?  The  answer  is,  I  think,  that  we  re- 
spect those  who  respect  themselves,  that  our  respect  for 
another  is  a  sympathetic  reflexion  of  his  self-respect ;  for 
unless  a  man  shows  self-respect  we  never  have  respect 
for  him,  even  though  we  may  admire  some  of  his  quali- 
ties, or  like,  or  even  love,  him  in  a  certain  degree.  The 
generally  recognised  fact  that  we  may  like  without  re- 
specting, and  may  respect  without  liking,  shows  very 
clearly  the  essentially  different  natures  of  these  two  senti- 
ments, love  and  respect. 

The  older  moralists  frequently  made  use  of  the  expres- 
sion "self-love,"  and  in  doing  so  generally  confounded 
under  this  term  two  different  sentiments,  self-love  and 
self-respect.  Self-love  is  fortunately  a  comparatively 
rare  sentiment ;  it  is  the  self-regarding  sentiment  of  the 
thoroughly  selfish  man,  the  meaner  sort  of  egoist.  Such 
a  man  feels  a  tender  emotion  for  himself,  he  indulges  in 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS     167 

self-pity;  he  may  have  little  positive  self- feeling  and 
may  be  incapable  of  shame.^ 

Besides  the  sentiments  of  these  three  main  types,  love, 
hate,  and  respect,  which  may  be  called  complete  or  full- 
grown  sentiments,  we  must  recognise  the  existence  of 
sentiments  of  all  degrees  of  development  from  the  most 
rudimentary  upward ;  these  may  be  regarded  as  stages  in 
the  formation  of  fully-grown  sentiments,  although  many 
of  them  never  attain  any  great  degree  of  complexity  or 
strength.  These  we  have  to  name  according  to  the  prin- 
cipal emotional  disposition  entering  into  their  composi- 
tion. 

The  sentiments  may  also  be  classified  according  to  the 
nature  of  their  objects;  they  then  fall  into  three  main 
classes,  the  concrete  particular,  the  concrete  general,  and 
the  abstract  sentiments — e.g.,  the  sentiment  of  love  for  a 
child,  of  love  for  children  in  general,  of  love  for  justice 
or  virtue.  Their  development  in  the  individual  follows 
this  order,  the  concrete  particular  sentiments  being,  of 
course,  the  earliest  and  most  easily  acquired.  The  num- 
ber of  sentiments  a  man  may  acquire,  reckoned  according 
to  the  number  of  objects  in  which  they  are  centred,  may, 
of  course,  be  very  large ;  but  almost  every  man  has  a 

^  I  shall  be  told  that  in  restricting  in  this  way  the  meaning  of 
the  term  "self-love"  I  am  setting  aside  a  usage  consecrated  by 
age  and  the  writings  of  innumerable  moralists.  I  would  antici- 
pate this  objection  by  asking — Why  should  the  psychologist  feel 
any  obligation  to  clog  and  hamper  the  development  of  his  science 
by  a  regard  for  the  terminology  of  the  pre-scientific  ages,  while 
the  workers  in  other  scientific  fields  are  permitted  to  develop 
their  terminology  with  a  single  eye  to  its  precision  and  to  the 
accurate  discrimination  and  classification  of  the  like  and  the  un- 
like? The  chemist  is  not  held  to  be  under  any  obligation  to 
class  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water  with  his  elements,  nor  does  the 
physicist  persist  in  classing  heat  and  electricity  with  the  fluid 
substances. 


i68  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

small  number  of  sentiments — perhaps  one  only — that 
greatly  surpass  all  the  rest  in  strength  and  as  regards 
the  proportion  of  his  conduct  that  springs  from  them. 
C  Each  sentiment  has  a  life-history,  like  every  other  vital 
organisation.  It  is  gradually  built  up,  increasing  in  com- 
plexity and  strength,  and  may  continue  to  grow  indefi- 
j  nitely,  or  may  enter  upon  a  period  of  decline,  and  may 
\decay  slow^ly  or  rapidly,  partially  or  completely. 

When  any  one  of  the  emotions  is  strongly  or  repeated- 
ly excited  by  a  particular  object,  there  is  formed  the 
rudiment  of  a  sentiment.  Suppose  that  a  child  is  throwm 
into  the  company  of  some  person  given  to  frequent  out- 
bursts of  violent  anger,  say,  a  violent-tempered  father 
who  is  otherwise  indifferent  to  the  child  and  takes  no 
further  notice  of  him  than  to  threaten,  scold,  and,  per- 
haps, beat  him.  At  first  the  child  experiences  fear  at 
each  exhibition  of  violence ;  but  repetition  of  these  inci- 
dents very  soon  creates  the  habit  of  fear,  and  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  father,  even  in  his  mildest  moods,  the  child 
is  timorous ;  that  is  to  say,  the  mere  presence  of  the 
father  throws  the  child's  fear-disposition  into  a  condition 
of  sub-excitement,  which  increases  on  the  slightest  oc- 
casion until  it  produces  all  the  subjective  and  objective 
manifestations  of  fear.  As  a  further  stage  the  mere  idea 
of  the  father  becomes  capable  of  producing  the  same 
effects  as  his  presence;  this  idea  has  become  associated 
with  the  emotion ;  or,  in  stricter  language,  the  psycho- 
physical disposition,  whose  excitement  involves  the  rise 
to  consciousness  of  this  idea,  has  become  associated  or 
intimately  connected  with  the  psycho-physical  disposition 
whose  excitement  produces  the  bodily  and  mental  symp- 
toms of  fear.  Such  an  association  constitutes  a  rudi- 
mentary sentiment  that  we  can  only  call  a  sentiment  of 
fear. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS     169 

In  a  similar  way,  a  single  act  of  kindness  done  by  A 
to  B  may  evoke  in  B  the  emotion  of  gratitude ;  and  if  A 
repeats  his  kindly  acts,  conferring  benefits  on  B,  the 
gratitude  of  B  may  become  habitual,  may  become  an  en- 
during emotional  attitude  of  B  towards  A — a  sentiment 
of  gratitude.  Or,  in  either  case,  a  single  act — one  evok- 
ing very  intense  fear  or  gratitude — may  suffice  to  render 
the  association  more  or  less  durable  and  the  attitude  of 
fear,  or  gratitude,  of  B  towards  A  more  or  less  per- 
manent. 

The  same  is  true  of  most,  perhaps  of  all,  of  the  emo- 
tions of  the  class  that  do  not  presuppose  sentiments  al- 
ready formed  for  the  object  of  the  emotion — e.g.,  of  ad- 
miration, of  anger,  of  disgust,  of  pity.  We  must,  then, 
recognise,  as  limiting  cases  on  the  side  of  simplicity,  sen- 
timents formed  by  the  association  of  a  single  emotional 
disposition  with  the  idea  of  some  object.  But  it  can  sel- 
dom happen  that  a  sentiment  persists  in  this  rudimentary 
condition  for  any  long  period  of  time.  Any  such  senti- 
ment is  liable  to  die  away  for  lack  of  stimulus,  or,  if 
further  relations  are  maintained  with  its  object,  to  de- 
velop into  a  more  complex  organisation.  Thus  the  sim- 
ple sentiment  of  fear,  created  in  the  way  we  have  imag- 
ined, will  tend  to  develop,  and  will  most  readily  become 
hate  by  the  incorporation  of  other  emotional  dispositions; 
anger  may  be  frequently  aroused  by  the  harsh  punish- 
ments and  restrictions  imposed  by  the  violent-tempered 
father,  perhaps  also  revenge,  disgust,  and  shame;  and 
after  each  occasion  on  which  the  father  becomes  the 
object  of  these  emotions,  they  remain  more  ready  to  be 
stirred  by  him  or  by  the  mere  thought  of  him;  they  all, 
in  virtue  of  their  repeated  excitement  by  this  one  object, 
become  associated  with  the  object  more  and  more  inti- 
mately, until  the  mere  idea  of  him  may  suffice  to  throw 


I70  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

them  all  at  once  into  a  condition  of  sub-excitement,  or  to 
arouse  all  of  them  in  turn  or  in  conjunction  to  full  ac- 
tivity. So  the  rudimentary  sentiment,  whose  only  erno- 
tional  constituent  is  fear,  develops  into  a  full-blown 
hatred. 

Now  let  us  take  parental  love  as  the  type  of  a  strong 
and  highly  complex  sentiment,  and  let  us  consider  its 
development.  By  reason  of  its  helplessness,  its  delicacy, 
its  distresses,  the  young  child  evokes  sooner  or  later  the 
tender  emotion  of  the  parent,  if  he  is  at  all  capable  of 
this  emotion;  and  if  the  parent  does  not,  through  lazi- 
ness or  under  the  influence  of  a  bad  tradition,  restrain 
the  protective  impulse,  it  finds  its  satisfaction  in  a  series 
of  tender  acts.  Each  time  the  emotion  and  its  impulse 
are  brought  into  operation  by  this  particular  object,  they 
are  rendered  more  easily  excitable  in  the  same  way,  until 
the  mere  idea  of  this  object  is  constantly  accompanied  by 
some  degree  of  the  emotion,  however  feeble.  This  gives 
the  object  a  special  power  of  attracting  and  holding  the 
attention  of  the  parent,  who  therefore  constantly  notices 
the  child's  expressions;  and  these  evoke  by  sympathetic 
reaction  the  corresponding  feelings  and  emotions  in  the 
parent.  Thus  all  the  tender  and  attracting  emotions  are 
repeatedly  aroused  by  this  one  object,  either  singly  or 
in  combination — pity,  wonder,  admiration,  gratitude,  so- 
licitude, as  well  as  sympathetic  pain  and  pleasure,  and 
quick  anger  at  neglect  or  injury  of  the  child  by  others. 
This,  perhaps,  is  as  far  as  the  sentiment  normally  de- 
velops while  the  child  is  very  young.  But  there  comes 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  things  a  time  when  the  child 
learns  to  reciprocate  the  parent's  sentiment  and,  by  its 
expressions  of  tenderness  or  gratitude,  intensifies  the  sat- 
isfaction of  the  parental  emotions ;  in  so  doing  it  welds 
the  father's  sentiment  still  more  strongly  than  before,  and 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS     171 

also  establishes  the  relation  presently  to  be  discussed 
under  the  head  of  active  sympathy.  But  this  is  not  all ; 
the  parent  is  apt  to  identify  the  child  with  himself  in  a 
peculiarly  intimate  way,  for  he  knows  that  the  world  in 
general  regards  its  qualities  and  its  defects  as,  in  a  sense, 
his  own ;  and  so  his  self-regarding  sentiment  of  respect 
or  of  pride  becomes  directly  extended  to  the  child ;  what- 
ever is  admirable  about  it  brings  satisfaction  to  his  posi- 
tive self-feeling;  whatever  is  defective  humbles  him,  ex- 
cites his  negative  self-feeling;  its  shame  or  disgrace  is 
his  shame,  its  triumphs  are  his  triumphs.  It  is  the  fusion 
of  these  two  sentiments,  the  altruistic  and  the  egoistic,  in 
the  parental  sentiment  that  gives  it  its  incomparable  hold 
upon  our  natures,  and  makes  it  a  sentiment  from  which 
proceed  our  most  intense  joys  and  sorrows.  And  not 
only  are  the  various  emotions,  such  as  tender  emotion 
and  positive  self-feeling,  excited  in  complex  conjunc- 
tions, but  it  would  seem  that  each  emotion  excited  with- 
in the  system  of  any  complex  sentiment  acquires  an  in- 
creased intensity  and  its  impulse  an  additional  energy 
from  its  membership  in  the  system,  an  increment  of  en- 
ergy which  is  greater  the  larger  the  number  of  disposi- 
tions comprised  within  the  system.^  To  all  this  must  be 
added  yet  another  factor — every  effort  and  every  sacri- 
fice made  on  the  child's  behalf,  every  pain  suffered 
through  it,  adds  to  the  strength  of  the  sentiment ;  for 
with  each  such  incident  we  feel  that  we  put  something  of 
ourselves  into  the  object  of  the  sentiment ;  and  this  sense 
of  the  accumulation  of  our  efforts  and  sacrifices  gives 

^  For  the  same  reason  other  sentiments  of  this  type,  resulting 
from  fusion  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  with  the  love  of  an 
object  other  than  the  self  (of  which  patriotism  is  the  most 
striking  example),  acquire  their  power  of  supplying  dominant 
or  extremely  powerful  motives. 


172  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

it  an  additional  value;  we  come  to  regard  it  as  an  in- 
vestment in  which  we  have  sunk  our  capital  bit  by  bit, 
to  lose  which  would  be  to  lose  that  which  embodies  our 
past  efforts.  In  this  way  also  the  child  becomes  identified 
with  ourselves,  so  that,  as  with  any  other  thing,  such  as 
a  work  of  art  or  science,  to  the  shaping  of  which  our 
best  powers  have  been  devoted,  approval  of  it  gives  us 
pleasure  and  disapproval  pain,  equally  with  approval  or 
disapproval  of  ourselves. 

Though  the  parental  sentiment  in  its  completest  form 
arises  from  the  fusion  of  the  purely  altruistic  with  the 
extended  self-regarding  sentiment,  it  may  be  wholly  of 
one  or  other  type.  The  mother  of  a  child  that  is  men- 
tally and  physically  defective  can  find  little  occasion  for 
extending  to  it  her  self-respect  or  pride ;  it  does  not  min- 
ister to  her  positive  self-feeling,  but  rather,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  identified  with  herself,  is  a  cause  of  shame  and 
pain.  Yet  the  maternal  instinct  often  rises  superior  to 
these  influences,  which  would  make  for  hate  rather  than 
for  love ;  the  greater  needs  of  the  child  do  but  call 
out  more  intensely  and  frequently  her  tender  emotion, 
and  she  cherishes  it  with  a  sentiment  that  is  almost  purely 
tender. 

On  the  other  hand,  many  a  father's  sentiment  for  his 
children  is  very  little,  or  not  at  all,  tender,  is  not  properly 
love,  but  is  a  mere  extension  of  his  self-regarding  senti- 
ment. He  is  gratified — i.e.,  his  positive  self-feeling  at- 
tains satisfaction — when  they  are  admired  or  when  they 
achieve  success  of  any  kind ;  he  feels  shame  when  they 
appear  bad-mannered  or  ill-dressed  or  stupid ;  and  he 
labours  to  fit  them  to  take  a  good  place  in  the  world,  or 
is  ambitious  for  them,  just  as  he  labours  for,  and  is  am- 
bitious for,  himself ;  all,  perhaps,  without  once  experienc- 
ing the  least  touch  of  tender  emotion  for  them. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS    173 

The  sentiment  of  affection  for  an  equal  generally  takes 
its  rise,  not  in  simple  tender  emotion,  but  in  admiration, 
or  gratitude,  or  pity,  and  is  especially  developed  by  ac- 
tive sympathy.  By  active  sympathy  I  mean  sympathy 
in  the  fuller,  more  usual,  sense  of  the  word;  we  must 
carefully  distinguish  it  from  the  simple,  primitive,  or 
passive  sympathy  discussed  in  Chapter  IV.  Active  sym- 
pathy plays,  or  may  play,  a  minor  part  in  the  genesis 
of  the  parental  sentiment,  but  it  is  of  prime  importance 
for  the  development  of  the  sentiment  of  affection  be- 
tween equals ;  for  while  the  former  may  be  wholly  one- 
sided, the  latter  can  hardly  become  fully  formed  and 
permanent  without  some  degree  of  reciprocation  and 
of  sympathy  in  this  fuller  sense. 

Active  sympathy  presents  a  difficult  problem,  which 
we  may  consider  in  this  connexion.  It  involves  a  re- 
ciprocal relation  between  at  least  two  persons;  either 
party  to  the  relation  not  only  is  apt  to  experience  the 
emotions  displayed  by  the  other,  but  he  desires  also  that 
the  other  shall  share  his  own  emotions ;  he  actively  seeks 
the  sympathy  of  the  other,  and,  when  he  has  communi- 
cated his  emotion  to  the  other,  he  attains  a  peculiar  satis- 
faction which  greatly  enhances  his  pleasure  and  his 
joy,  or,  in  the  case  of  painful  emotion,  diminishes  his 
pain. 

This  relation  of  active  sympathy  is  apt  to  grow  up 
between  any  two  persons  who  are  thrown  much  together, 
if  they  are  commonly  stirred  to  similar  emotions  by  simi- 
lar objects ;  and  that  can  only  be  the  case  if  they  have 
similar  sentiments.  Two  persons  may  live  together  for 
years,  and,  if  their  sentiments  are  very  different,  if  one 
of  them  likes  and  dislikes  the  things  that  are  for  the 
most  part  indifferent  to  the  other,  there  will  be  no  habitual 
sympathy  established  between  them.     There  may  be  a 


174  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

reciprocal  sentiment  of  love  without  active  sympathy,  as 
in  some  cases  of  mother  and  child  ^ ;  and  in  such  cases 
there  will  be  reciprocation  of  tender  emotion,  and  when 
one  party  to  the  relation  is  in  distress  the  other  will  pity 
and  succour  him.  But  such  a  sentiment  of  love  without 
active  sympathy  brings  little  joy  and  is  likely  to  be 
troubled  by  frequent  jars,  irritations,  and  regrets.  In- 
stances of  this  kind  of  relation  are  common  enough ;  they 
show  clearly  that  tender  emotion  and  pity,  though  often 
in  popular  speech  and  by  many  psychologists  confused 
with  sympathy,  do  not  constitute  sympathy;  and  they 
show  also  that  sympathy  is  not  essential  to  love,  that,  in 

^hort,  sympathy  (both  the  simple  or  passive  and  the  coni- 

Iplex  active  variety)    and  tender  emotion  are  radically 

Mistinct. 
^  If,  however,  the  relation  of  active  sympathy  is  es- 
tablished between  any  two  persons,  some  sentiment  of 

/affection  is  pretty  sure  to  grow  up  in  both  parties,  if 

/  they  are  at  all  capable  of  tender  emotion ;  and,  except  in 

/  the  case  of  parental  love,  active  sympathy  is  the  most 

sure  foundation  of  love  and  is  an  essential  feature  of  any 

I  completely  satisfying  affection. 

We  have,  then,  to  ask,  Why  do  we  seek  and  find  this 
peculiar  satisfaction  in  the  mere  fact  of  another  person's 
sharing  our  emotion?  In  the  case  of  the  pleasurable 
emotions  we  may  see  a  partial  explanation  in  the  fact  that 
the  sharing  of  our  emotion  by  another  intensifies  our 
own  emotion  by  way  of  the  fundamental  reaction  of 
primitive  sympathy,^  and  therefore  intensifies  our 
pleasure  or  our  joy.  But  the  sharing  of  our  emotion  in- 
tensifies also  the  painful  emotions,  anger,  revenge,  fear, 
pity,  and  sorrowful  emotion ;  yet  in  these  cases  also  we 

^E.g.,  the  relation  of  mother  and  son  in  Mr.  Wells's  "Days  of 
the  Comet."  ^  Cp.  Chapter  IV. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS    175 

desire  that  others  shall  share  our  emotion  and  find  a  cer- 
tain satisfaction  when  they  do  so. 

Some  further  explanation  of  active  sympathy  is  there- 
fore required,  and  in  order  to  find  it  we  must,  I  think, 
fall  back  on  the  gregarious  instinct.  The  excitement  of 
this,  the  pre-eminently  social  instinct,  is  accompanied, 
as  we  have  seen,  by  no  specific  emotion  of  well-marked 
quality.  In  the  simplest  cases  it  operates  merely  to  pro- 
duce an  uneasy  restlessness  in  any  member  of  a  herd 
or  other  animal  society  that  has  become  separated  from 
its  fellows,  impelling  him  to  wander  to  and  fro  until  he 
finds  and  rejoins  the  herd.  In  the  present  connection  it 
is  important  that  this  gregarious  impulse  seems  gene- 
rally to  be  called  into  play  in  conjunction  with  some 
other  instinct;  that  is  to  say,  the  excitement  of  any 
other  instinct  seems  to  predispose  to  the  excitement  of 
this  one.  This  is,  perhaps,  most  obvious  in  the  case  of 
fear.  The  gregarious  animal  may  graze  in  comfort  at 
some  distance  from  his  fellows,  but  at  the  slightest 
alarm  will  run  first  to  join  them,  before  making  ofif  in 
headlong  flight.  But  it  is  true  also  of  anger  and 
curiosity,  of  the  migratory  instinct,  of  the  food-seeking 
impulse  when  sharpened  by  hunger,  and  of  the  mating 
instinct.  Animals  of  many  species  live  for  the  most  part 
more  or  less  scattered,  or  in  family  groups  only,  but 
come  together  in  vast  collections  when  these  special  in- 
stincts are  excited. 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  gregarious  instinct  supple-  \ 
ments,  as  it  were,  each  of  the  special  instincts,  renderingy 
complete  satisfaction  of  their  impulses  impossible,  until 
each  animal  is  surrounded  by  others  of  the  same  species 
in  a  similar  state  of  excitement.  Since  man  certainly 
inherits  this  instinct,  we  may  see  in  this  instinct  the 
principle  that  we  need  for  the  explanation  of  the  de- 


176  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

velopment  of  active  sympathy  from  the  crude  sympa- 
thetic reaction  or  mere  sympathetic  induction  of  emo- 
tion that  we  studied  in  Chapter  IV.  The  bHnd  impulse 
of  the  gregarious  animal  to  seek  the  company  of  his 
fellows,  whenever  one  of  his  other  instincts  is  excited, 
becomes  in  us  the  desire  of  seeing  ourselves  surrounded 
by  others  who  share  our  emotion ;  and  it  is  apt  to  be- 
come directed  to  seeking  the  sympathetic  response  of 
some  one  person  in  whom  we  are  sure  of  evoking  it; 
and  then,  having  become  habitually  directed  to  that  per- 
son, it  finds  a  more  certain  and  complete  and  detailed 
satisfaction  than  is  possible  if  it  remains  unspecialised. 

That  we  are  right  in  thus  finding  the  root  of  active 
sympathy  in  an  ancient  and  deep-seated  instinct,  and 
that  the  impulse  of  this  instinct  is  distinct  from  the 
tender  or  protective  impulse,  is  shown  by  the  great  dif- 
ferences between  us  in  regard  to  this  impulse  in  spite  of 
similar  conditions  of  life,  differences  that  do  not  run 
parallel  with  our  differences  in  regard  to  the  strength  of 
the  tender  impulse.  There  are  men  who  seem  almost  de- 
void of  active  sympathy;  they  are  content  to  admire,  or 
to  be  indignant,  or  vengeful,  or  tender,  or  curious,  or 
grateful,  alone,  and  they  derive  little  or  no  satisfaction 
from  finding  that  others  are  sharing  their  emotions.  Such 
a  man  is  not  necessarily  incapable  of  the  tender  emo- 
tion and  the  sentiment  of  love ;  he  may  be  tenderly  de- 
voted to  his  family  and  be  capable  of  the  most  truly 
disinterested  conduct,  but  he  is  by  nature  a  solitary,  his 
gregarious  instinct  is  abnormally  weak,  and  therefore  he 
is  content  to  bury  his  joys  and  his  sorrows  in  his  own 
bosom. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  person  in  whom  this  impulse 
is  strong  can  find,  when  alone,  no  enjoyment  in  the 
things  that  give  him,  when  in  sympathetic  company,  the 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS     177 

keenest  delight.  He  may,  for  example,  be  an  enthusiastic 
admirer  of  natural  beauty;  but  if,  by  some  strange 
chance,  he  takes  a  walk  alone  through  the  most  beautiful 
scenes,  his  emotional  stirrings,  which,  if  shared  by  others, 
would  be  a  pure  delight,  are  accompanied  by  a  vague 
though  painful  desire,  whose  nature  he  may  or  may  not 
clearly  recognise.  And  the  chances  are  that  he  occupies 
himself  in  making  mental  notes  of  the  scenes  before  him 
and  hurries  home  to  give  a  glowing  description  of  them 
to  some  friend  who,  he  knows,  will  be  stirred  in  some  de- 
gree to  share  his  emotions.  Some  persons,  in  whom  this 
impulse  is  but  little  specialised  though  strong  and  whose 
emotions  are  quick  and  vivid,  are  not  satisfied  until  all 
about  them  share  their  emotions ;  they  are  pained  and 
even  made  angry  by  the  spectacle  of  any  one  remaining 
unmoved  by  the  objects  of  their  own  emotions. 

Many  children  manifest  very  clearly  this  tendency  of 
active  sympathy ;  they  demand  that  their  every  emotion 
shall  be  shared  at  once.  "Oh,  come  and  look !"  is  their 
constant  cry  when  out  for  a  walk,  and  every  object  that 
excites  their  curiosity  or  admiration  is  brought  at  once, 
or  pointed  out,  to  their  companion.  And  if  that  com- 
panion is  unsympathetic,  or  is  wearied  by  their  too  fre- 
quent demands  upon  his  emotional  capacities,  the  urg- 
ency of  this  impulse  gives  rise  to  pain  and  anger  and, 
perhaps,  a  storm  of  tears.  On  the  other  hand,  another 
child,  brought  up,  perhaps,  under  identical  conditions, 
but  in  whom  this  impulse  is  relatively  weak,  will  explore 
a  garden,  interested  and  excited  for  hours  together,  with- 
out once  feeling  the  need  for  sympathy,  without  once 
calling  on  others  to  share  his  emotion. 

Active  sympathy  is,  then,  egoistic,  it  is  a  seeking  of ) 
one's  own  satisfaction.    There  are  selfish  men  in  whom 
this  tendency  is  very  strong ;  such  men  wear  out  their 


17.8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

wives,  or  others  about  them,  by  their  constant  demands 
for  sympathetic  emotion,  regardless  of  the  strain  they 
put  upon  their  companions,  who  cannot  always  be  in  the 
mood  to  sympathise.  Such  men  constantly  demand 
sympathy  and  give  but  little.  Sympathy  then,  whether 
in  the  active  or  the  passive  form,  is  not  the  root  of 
altruism,  as  Bain  and  others  would  have  it.  Nor  is  it, 
as  Mr.  Sutherland  maintains,  to  be  identified  with  the 
maternal  impulse.  But,  although  it  is  not  in  itself  an 
altruistic  impulse  and  is  not  in  any  sense  the  root  of 
altruism,  it  is  a  most  valuable  adjunct  to  the  tender 
emotion  in  the  formation  of  altruistic  sentiments  and  in 
stimulating  social  co-operation  for  social  ends.  The  man 
that  has  it  not  at  all,  or  in  whom  it  has  become  com- 
pletely specialised  (i.e.,  directed  to  some  one  or  few  per- 
sons only),  will  hardly  become  a  leader  and  inspirer  of 
others  in  the  reform  of  social  abuses,  in  the  public  recog- 
nition of  merit,  in  public  expression  of  moral  indignation, 
or  in  any  other  of  those  collective  expressions  of  emo- 
tion which  do  so  much  to  bind  societies  together,  even  if 
they  fail  of  achieving  their  immediate  ends. 

It  is  only  when  this  active  sympathy  is  specialised  and 
is  combined  in  both  parties  with  a  reciprocal  sentiment 
of  affection,  and  when  each,  knowing  that  the  other 
desires  his  sympathy  and  derives  from  it  increase  of  joy 
and  diminution  of  pain,  desires  to  procure  these  results 
for  the  other  and  in  turn  derives  satisfaction  from  the 
knowledge  that  he  can  and  does  produce  these  results — 
it  is  only  then  that  sympathy,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word,  is  achieved. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS   AND  OF  THE  SELF- 
REGARDING  SENTIMENT 

TF  we  would  understand  the  life  of  societies,  we  must 
-■-  first  learn  to  understand  the  way  in  which  individuals 
become  moulded  by  the  society  into  which  they  are  born 
and  in  which  they  grow  up,  how  by  this  moulding  they  t 
become  fitted  to  play  their  part  in  it  as  social  beings — 
how,  in  short,  they  become  capable  of  moral  conduct. 
Moral  conduct  is  essentially  social  conduct,  and  there 
could  be  no  serious  objection  to  the  use  of  the  two  ex- 
pressions as  synonymous ;  but  it  is  more  in  conformity 
with  common  usage  to  restrict  the  term  "moral"  to  the 
higher  forms  of  social  conduct  of  which  man  alone  is 
capable. 

While  the  lower  forms  of  social  conduct  are  the  direct 
issue  of  the  prompting  of  instinct — as  when  the  animal- 
mother  sufi:ers  privation,  wounds,  or  death  in  the  defence 
of  her  young  under  the  impulse  of  the  maternal  instinct 
— the  higher  forms  of  social  conduct,  which  alone  are 
usually  regarded  as  moral,  involve  the  voluntary  control 
and  regulation  of  the  instinctive  impulses.  Now,  volition 
or  voluntary  control  proceeds  from  the  idea  of  the  self 
and  from  the  sentiment,  or  organised  system  of  emotions 
and  impulses,  centred  about  that  idea.  Hence  the  study 
of  the  development  of  self-consciousness  and  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  is  an  important  part  of  the  prepara- 
tion for  the  understanding  of  social  phenomena.     And 

179 


i8o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

these  two  things,  the  idea  of  the  self  and  the  self-regard- 
ing sentiment,  develop  in  such  intimate  relations  with 
each  other  that  they  must  be  studied  together.  This  de- 
velopment is,  as  we  shall  see,  essentially  a  social  process, 
one  which  is  dependent  throughout  upon  the  complex 
interactions  between  the  individual  and  the  organised 
society  to  which  he  belongs. 

Almost  all  animals  are  capable  in  some  degree  of 
learning  to  modify  their  instinctive  behaviour  in  the 
light  of  experience,  under  the  guidance  of  pleasure  and 
pain;  and  in  the  young  child  also  this  kind  of  learning 
leads  to  the  first  steps  beyond  purely  instinctive  be- 
haviour. At  first,  all  eflforts  and  movements  of  the  young 
infant  or  young  animal,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  mere 
reflexes,  are  directly  and  wholly  due  to  the  instinctive  im- 
pulses. When  any  such  movement  directly  attains  its 
end,  the  pleasure  of  satisfaction  confirms  the  tendency 
to  that  particular  kind  of  action  in  relation  to  that  kind 
of  object  or  situation.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  movements 
of  the  kind  first  made  are  not  successful,  the  pain  of 
failure  brings  them  to  an  end;  but  the  impulse  persists 
and  some  variation  of  the  movements  is  made,  again 
and  again,  until  success  is  achieved ;  then  the  pleasure  of 
satisfaction  confirms  this  last  and  successful  kind  of 
movement,  so  that,  whenever  the  same  impulse  is  again 
excited,  it  will  work  towards  its  end  by  means  of  this 
kind  of  action  rather  than  by  means  of  any  other.  Few 
of  the  animals  rise  to  higher  modes  of  learning  or  acquisi- 
tion. But  in  the  infant,  as  his  powers  of  representation 
develop,  as  he  becomes  capable  of  free  ideas,  the  end 
towards  which  any  instinct  impels  him  becomes  more 
or  less  clearly  represented  in  his  mind  as  an  object  of 
desire.  The  first  result  of  this  transformation  of  blind 
appetite  or  impulse  into  desire  is  greater  continuity  of  ef- 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS    i8i 

fort;  for,  when  the  power  of  representation  of  the  ob- 
ject has  been  attained,  the  attention  is  not  so  readily 
drawn  off  from  it  by  irrelevant  sensory  impressions  of 
all  sorts. 

Then,  as  the  child's  intellectual  powers  develop  fur- 
ther, the  train  of  activity  through  which  the  end  of  any 
impulse  is  attained  becomes  longer;  a  succession  of  ac- 
tions is  performed,  each  of  which  is  only  a  means  to 
the  end  prescribed  by  the  instinctive  impulse;  objects  that 
are  in  themselves  uninteresting  are  made  use  of  as  means 
to  the  end.  In  all  such  mediate  activities  the  original 
impulse  persists  as  the  motive  power  of  the  whole 
sequence.  In  so  far  as  the  actions  and  objects  made 
use  of  do  not  bring  him  nearer  to  his  end,  they  are  dis- 
carded ;  he  turns  to  others,  until  he  finds  those  by  means 
of  which  success  is  attainable.  When,  thereafter,  a  simi- 
lar situation  recurs,  this  last  sequence  of  actions  and  ob- 
jects is  the  one  brought  into  play. 

The  principle  that  the  original  impulse  or  conation  sup- 
plies the  motive  power  to  all  the  activities  that  are  but 
means  to  the  attainment  of  the  desired  end — this  princi- 
ple is  of  supreme  importance  for  the  understanding  of 
the  mental  life  and  conduct  of  men.  The  train  of 
activity,  supported  by  any  one  of  the  instinctive  impulses, 
may  become  in  this  way  indefinitely  prolonged  and 
incessantly  renewed ;  it  may  take  the  predominantly  in- 
tellectual form  of  thinking  out  means  for  the  attainment 
of  the  end. 

This  complication  of  purely  instinctive  behaviour  in 
the  developing  child  may  be  illustrated  by  a  concrete 
example.  Suppose  that  a  hungry  young  child  has  by 
chance  found  something  good  to  eat  in  a  certain  cup- 
board that  has  been  left  open.  On  the  next  occasion 
that  he  comes  hungry  within  sight  of  the  cupboard,  he 


i82  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

may  at  once  turn  to  and  help  himself  to  food.  So  much 
profiting  by  experience  any  of  the  higher  animals  may 
display.  Next  suppose  that  the  child  finds  himself 
hungry  while  in  another  part  of  the  house.  The  idea  of 
the  cupboard  and  of  the  food  in  it  rises  to  consciousness, 
and  he  goes  oflf  to  find  it  and  to  repeat  his  successful  raid. 
Again,  suppose  that  on  another  similar  occasion  he  finds 
on  reaching  the  cupboard  that  it  is  latched  and  that  the 
latch  is  out  of  his  reach.  He  goes  and  fetches  a  foot- 
stool, but  still  he  cannot  reach  the  latch.  Perhaps  then 
the  obstruction  to  his  conation  excites  his  anger  and 
leads  to  a  violent  assault  upon  the  door ;  the  assault  may 
be  maintained  until  his  baffled  anger  gives  way  to  despair, 
his  efforts  relax,  and  he  weeps.  But,  if  he  is  an  intelli- 
gent child,  he  may  turn  away  from  the  footstool  and 
drag  up  a  chair  and  then,  reaching  the  latch,  secure  the 
desired  food.  All  this  train  of  varied  activity  is  main- 
tained by  the  one  original  hunger-impulse ;  the  mieans 
necessary  for  the  attainment  of  the  end  are  sought  as 
eagerly  as  the  food,  the  object  capable  of  directly  satis- 
fying the  impulse;  the  energy  of  the  original  hunger- 
impulse  imparts  itself  to  all  the  mediating  actions  found 
necessary  for  its  satisfaction.  And,  on  the  recurrence 
of  a  similar  situation,  the  child  will  go  at  once  to  seek 
the  necessary  chair,  neglecting  the  footstool;  for  the 
pleasure  of  success  has  confirmed  this  tendency,  and  the 
pain  of  failure  has  destroyed  the  tendency  to  seek  the  in- 
effectual footstool. 

Now  imagine  a  further  complication.  Suppose  that, 
just  as  the  child  is  about  to  seize  the  food  he  desires, 
some  harsh  elder  discovers  him  and  severely  punishes  him 
by  shutting  him  up  in  a  dark  room  where  he  suflFers  an 
agony  of  fear.  On  the  next  recurrence  of  the  situation, 
the  hunger-impulse  drives  him  on  as  before  until,  per- 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     183 

haps,  he  hears  in  the  distance  the  voice  of  the  person 
who  punished  him.  This  brings  to  his  mind  the  idea 
of  that  person  and  this  idea  re-excites  the  fear  induced 
by  the  punishment;  or,  mjore  probably,  the  sound  of  the 
voice  directly  excites  the  fear-impulse  in  the  way  we 
considered  in  Chapter  II.  There  then  takes  place  a  con- 
flict between  the  impulse  to  withdraw  and  the  hunger- 
impulse;  the  former  proving  stronger  and  overcoming 
the  latter,  he  runs  away  and  conceals  himself ;  presently 
the  fear  dies  away,  the  idea  of  the  desired  object  recurs 
and  restores  the  original  impulse,  which  then  attains  its 
end. 

Such  a  brute  conflict  of  impulses  is  characteristic  of 
conation  on  the  purely  perceptual  level  of  mental  life.  A 
rather  higher  stage  is  reached  when  the  two  impulses 
persist  side  by  side,  and  in  spite  of  fear,  which  keeps 
him  ready  to  flee  at  the  least  noise,  the  boy  steals  towards 
his  object,  taking  every  precaution  against  being  seen  or 
heard.  In  this  case  the  two  impulses  co-operate  in  de- 
termining each  step  in  the  sequence  of  actions,  the  one, 
the  desire  for  food,  predominating,  the  other  merely 
modifying  the  way  in  which  its  end  is  attained.  The  state 
of  affective  consciousness  accompanying  the  actions  that 
proceed  from  the  co-operation  of  the  two  impulses  is 
complex ;  it  is  not  simply  desire  of  food,  and  it  is  not 
simply  fear,  nor  is  it  merely  a  rapid  alternation  of  these 
two  states,  but  rather  an  imperfect  fusion  of  the  two  for 
which  we  have  no  name. 

Behaviour  of  this  kind  may  imply  but  a  minimum  of 
self-consciousness.  It  does  not  necessarily  imply  that 
the  child  has  any  idea  or  representation  of  himself  suf- 
fering punishment  or  of  the  punishment  itself.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  even  in  civilised  communities,  individuals 
of   low  type,  brought  up   under  unfavourable   circum- 


i84  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

stances,  whose  behaviour  hardly  rises  above  this  level. 
Whatever  power  of  conceptual  thought  such  a  being  at- 
tains is  exercised  merely  in  the  immediate  service  of 
desire  springing  directly  from  some  one  or  other  of  the 
primary  instinctive  impulses ;  he  may  display  a  certain 
cunning  in  the  pursuit  of  his  ends  and  may  form  certain 
habits  in  the  service  of  these  impulses,  perhaps  an 
habitual  caution  in  the  presence  of  strangers,  an  habitual 
brutality  towards  those  of  whom  he  has  no  fear.  He 
has  no  sense  of  responsibility  or  duty  or  obligation,  no 
ideal  of  self;  he  has  but  rudimentary  sentiments  in  re- 
gard to  himself  or  others,  has  no  character,  whether  good 
or  bad,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  and,  therefore, 
is  incapable  of  true  volition.  In  the  case  of  behaviour 
on  this  comparatively  low  level,  it  is  easy  to  understand 
that  the  instinctive  impulses  are  the  primary  springs  of 
all  activities,  and  that  the  pains  and  pleasures  experienced 
in  the  course  of  these  activities  merely  serve  to  modify 
the  actions  motived  by  these  impulses  and  thereby  to 
shape  the  habits  acquired  in  the  service  of  them.  Such 
behaviour  may  be  called  non-moral ;  it  can  no  more  be 
made  the  subject  of  moral  judgments  than  the  behaviour 
of  animals. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  of  conduct  is  the  man  all 
of  whose  actions  are  either  the  direct  issue  of  volitions 
or  the  outcome  of  habits  that  are  the  secondary  results 
of  volitions  or  at  least  have  been  deliberately  shaped, 
restrained  here,  encouraged  there,  by  volitional  control. 
Instead  of  acting  at  once  upon  each  impulse,  instead  of 
striving  to  realise  each  desired  end,  such  a  man  often  re- 
sists, if  he  cannot  altogether  suppress,  his  strongest  de- 
sires, and  acts  in  direct  opposition  to  them;  his  conduct 
does  not  seem  to  be  the  issue  of  a  mere  conflict  of  de- 
sires, the  stronger  one  prevailing;  he  often  seems  to  act, 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     185 

not  in  the  line  of  least  resistance ;  but  in  the  line  of 
greatest  resistance ;  the  motives  from  which  he  acts  may 
be,  as  facts  of  immediate  experience,  as  feelings,  emo- 
tions, conations,  much  less  intense  than  the  strong  feel- 
ings, emotions,  and  desires  whose  promptings  he  resists. 

How  does  it  become  possible  for  a  man  thus  to  act  in 
the  line  of  greatest  resistance,  to  make  the  feebler  pre- 
vail over  the  stronger  desire?  It  is  the  capacity  for  this 
kind  of  action  that  gives  the  highest  moral  conduct  the 
appearance  of  being  uncaused,  the  outcome  of  a  free  will, 
in  the  sense  of  a  will  not  proceeding  from  antecedent  con- 
ditions in  the  constitution  of  the  individual.  Such  con- 
duct raises  the  problem  of  the  will  in  its  most  difficult 
form. 

The  child  has  to  pass  gradually  in  the  course  of  its 
development  from  the  lowest  stage  of  behaviour  to  this 
highest  stage ;  and  we  must  gain  some  understanding  of 
this  genesis  of  the  higher  conduct  out  of  the  lower,  be- 
fore we  can  hope  to  understand  the  nature  of  volition  and 
its  conditions  and  eff"ects  in  the  life  of  societies.  The 
passage  is  effected  by  the  development  of  self-conscious- 
ness, of  the  sentiments,  and  of  character.  And  it  is  only 
when  we  trace  the  growth  of  self-consciousness  that  we 
can  understand  how  it  comes  to  play  its  part  in  determin- 
ing conduct  of  the  kind  that  alone  renders  possible  the 
complex  life  of  highly  organised  societies.  For  we  find 
that  the  idea  of  the  self  and  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
are  essentially  social  products;  that  their  development  is 
effected  by  constant  interplay  between  personalities,  be- 
tween the  self  and  society ;  that,  for  this  reason,  the  com- 
plex conception  of  self  thus  attained  implies  constant 
reference  to  others  and  to  society  in  general,  and  is,  in 
fact,  not  merely  a  conception  of  self,  but  always  of  one's 
self  in  relation  to  other  selves.    This  social  genesis  of  the 


i86  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

idea  of  self  lies  at  the  root  of  morality,  and  it  was 
largely  because  this  social  origin  and  character  of  the 
idea  of  self  was  ignored  by  so  many  of  the  older  moralists 
that  they  were  driven  to  postulate  a  special  moral  faculty, 
the  conscience  or  moral  instinct. 

We  may  roughly  distinguish  four  levels  of  conduct, 
successive  stages,  each  of  which  must  be  traversed  by 
every  individual  before  he  can  attain  the  next  higher 
stage.  These  are  (i)  the  stage  of  instinctive  behaviour 
modified  only  by  the  influence  of  the  pains  and  pleasures 
that  are  incidentally  experienced  in  the  course  of  in- 
stinctive activities;  (2)  the  stage  in  which  the  opera- 
tion of  the  instinctive  impulses  is  modified  by  the  in- 
fluence of  rewards  and  punishments  administered  more 
or  less  systematically  by  the  social  environment;  (3)  the 
stage  in  which  conduct  is  controlled  in  the  main  by  the 
anticipation  of  social  praise  and  blame;  (4)  the  highest 
stage,  in  which  conduct  is  regulated  by  an  ideal  of  con- 
duct that  enables  a  man  to  act  in  the  way  that  seemis  to 
him  right  regardless  of  the  praise  or  blame  of  his  im- 
mediate social  environment. 

The  word  "self"  or  "ego"  is  used  in  several  different 
senses  in  philosophical  discourse,  the  clearest  and  most 
important  of  these  being  the  self  as  logical  subject  and 
the  empirical  self.  In  considering  the  genesis  of  moral 
conduct  and  character,  we  need  concern  ourselves  with 
the  empirical  self  only.  We  may  have  a  conception  of 
the  self  as  a  substantial  or  enduring  psychical  entity  or 
soul  whose  states  are  our  states  of  consciousness.  Or 
we  may  hold  that,  by  the  very  nature  of  our  thought  and 
language,  we  are  logically  compelled  to  conceive,  and  to 
speak  of,  the  self  as  one  pole  of  the  subject-object  re- 
lation in  terms  of  which  alone  we  are  able  to  describe 
our  cognitive  experience,  the  knowing  or  being  aware  of 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     187 

anything.  But  such  conceptions  are  products  of  re- 
flexion arrived  at  comparatively  late,  if  at  all,  in  the 
process  of  individual  mental  development,  long  after  the 
complex  conception  of  the  empirical  self  has  been  formed 
through  a  multitude  of  experiences  of  a  less  reflective 
character.  Those  other  conceptions  of  the  self  are  of  im- 
portance from  our  present  point  of  view  only  in  so  far 
as  they  are  taken  up  into,  and  become  part  of,  the  em- 
pirical conception  of  the  self.  Thus  if  a  man  believes 
that  he  has,  or  is,  a  substantial  soul  that  can  continue  to 
enjoy  consciousness  after  the  death  of  the  body,  that  be- 
lief is  a  feature  of  his  total  conception  of  his  self  which 
may,  and  of  course  often  does,  profoundly  influence  his 
conduct.  But  it  is  a  feature  of  the  empirical  self  of  a 
certain  number  of  persons  only,  and  is  not  a  part  of  the 
empirical  self  of  others ;  nor  is  it  a  part  essential  to  moral 
conduct  of  the  highest  order,  as  we  know  from  many  in- 
stances. We  have  briefly  to  trace  the  genesis  of  the  idea 
of  the  empirical  self  in  so  far  as  it  is  common  to  all 
normally  constituted  mien;  and  in  doing  so  we  shall  fol- 
low in  the  main  the  description  of  the  process  recently 
worked  out  by  several  writers,  notably  by  Professors 
Baldwin  and  Royce. 

The  child's  first  step  in  this  direction  is  to  learn  to 
distinguish  the  objects  of  the  external  world  as  things 
existing  independently  of  himself.  How  this  step  is 
achieved  we  need  not  stop  to  inquire.  But  we  must  note 
that  all  those  features  of  the  child's  experience  that  are 
not  thus  extruded  or  referred  to  a  world  of  external 
reality  remain  to  constitute  the  nucleus  of  his  idea  of 
himself.  The  parts  of  his  body,  especially  his  limbs,  play 
a  very  peculiar  and  important  part  in  this  process,  be- 
cause they  are  presented  in  consciousness  sometimes  as 
things  of  the  outer  world,  as  parts  of  the  not-self,  some- 


i88  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

times — when  they  are  the  seats  of  pain,  discomfort,  heat 
or  cold,  or  muscular  sensations — as  parts  of  the  self. 
Thus  the  conception  of  the  bodily  self  is  in  large  part 
dependent  on  the  development  of  the  conception  of  things 
as  persistent  realities  of  the  external  world ;  and  the  con- 
ception of  those  things  is  in  turn  completed  by  the  pro- 
jection into  it  of  the  idea  of  the  self  as  a  centre  of  ef- 
fort, a  cause  of  movement  and  of  resistance  to  pres- 
sure. It  is  helpful  to  try  to  imagine  how  far  the  idea 
of  the  self  could  develop  in  a  human  being  of  normal 
native  endowment,  if  it  were  possible  for  him  to  grow 
up  from  birth  onward  in  a  purely  physical  environment, 
deprived,  that  is  to  say,  of  both  human  and  animal  com- 
panionship. It  would  seem  that  under  these  conditions 
he  could  achieve  at  best  but  a  very  rudimentary  and  crude 
idea  of  the  self.  It  would  be  little  more  than  a  bodily 
self,  which  would  be  distinguished  from  other  physical 
objects  chiefly  by  its  constant  presence  and  by  reason  of 
the  special  interest  that  would  attach  to  it  as  the  seat  of 
various  pains.  There  would  be  a  thread  of  continuity  or 
sameness  supplied  by  the  mass  of  organic  sensations  aris- 
ing from  the  internal  organs  and  constituting  what  is 
called  the  coensesthesia ;  and  still  more  intimate  and  fun- 
damental constituents  of  the  empirical  self  would  be  the 
primary  emotions,  the  conations,  pleasures,  and  pains. 
The  solitary  individual's  idea  of  self  could  hardly  surpass 
this  degree  of  complexity ;  for  the  further  development  of 
self-consciousness  is  wholly  a  social  process. 

At  first  the  child  fails  to  make  a  distinction  between 
the  two  classes  of  objects  that  make  up  his  external 
world,  his  not-self,  namely,  persons  and  inanimate  ob- 
jects. In  the  first  months  of  life  his  attention  is  pre- 
dominantly drawn  to  persons,  at  first  merely  because 
they  are  the  objects  that  most  frequently  move  and  emit 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      189 

sounds,  later  because  they  bring  him  relief  from  hunger 
and  other  discomforts.  He  therefore  learns  to  take 
interest  in  these  moving  objects,  he  watches  them,  he 
is  soothed  by  their  presence  and  distressed  by  their  ab- 
sence; and  very  early  the  mere  sound  of  the  mother's 
voice  may  still  his  crying,  bringing  anticipatory  satisfac- 
tion of  his  needs.  Very  early  also  the  expressions, 
especially  the  smile,  on  the  faces  of  other  persons  and  the 
cries  of  other  children  excite  in  him  as  purely  instinctive 
reactions  similar  expressions,  which  are  doubtless  accom- 
panied in  some  degree  by  the  appropriate  feelings  and 
emotions ;  in  this  way  he  learns  to  understand  in  terms 
of  his  own  experience  the  expressions  of  others,  learns 
to  attribute  to  them  the  feelings  and  emotions  he  himself 
experiences.  He  finds  also  that  things  resist  his  efforts 
at  movement  in  very  various  degrees  and  that  they  forci- 
bly impress  movements  on  his  limbs.  So  he  comes  to  as- 
sume implicitly  in  his  behaviour  towards  things  of  the 
external  world  the  capacities  of  feeling  and  effort,  of 
emotion  and  sympathetic  response,  that  he  himself  re- 
peatedly experiences.  Inanimate  objects  are  at  first  con- 
ceived after  the  same  pattern  as  persons,  and  only  in  the 
course  of  some  years  does  he  gradually  learn  to  dis- 
tinguish clearly  between  persons  and  things,  divesting 
his  idea  of  inanimate  things  little  by  little,  but  never,  per- 
haps, completely,  of  the  personal  attributes,  the  capacities 
for  feeling  and  effort,  which  he  recognises  in  himself. 
His  treatment  of  inert  things  as  beings  possessed  of  per- 
sonal attributes  shows  clearly  that  his  ideas  of  things  in 
general  are  bound  up  with,  and  coloured  by,  his  rudi- 
mentary idea  of  his  self  as  a  being  capable  of  feeling  and 
effort,  and  that  his  idea  of  his  self  is  not  at  first  the  idea 
of  a  merely  bodily  self  fashioned  after  ideas  of  inert  ob- 
jects. 


I90  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

As  the  differentiation  of  persons  and  inert  objects  pro- 
ceeds, persons  continue  to  be  the  more  interesting  to  the 
young  child,  for  they  continue  to  be  the  main  sources  of 
his  pains  and  pleasures  and  satisfactions.  His  attention 
is  constantly  directed  towards  them,  and  he  begins  to  imi- 
tate their  behaviour.  He  finds  that  they  do  many  things 
he  cannot  do,  but  would  like  to  do ;  and  often  he  tends  to 
do  as  they  do  simply  because  their  actions  arrest  his  at- 
tention and  so  give  direction  to  the  outflow  of  his 
abundant  motor  energies.  But  much  more  important  than 
the  actions  of  the  people  about  him(  are  the  feelings  and 
emotions  that  prompt  them.  The  child  soon  learns  that 
he  can  play  upon  these  to  a  certain  extent  and  so  acquires 
an  interest  in  understanding  the  attitudes  of  others  to- 
wards himself.  He  widens  his  experience  and  his  un- 
derstanding of  the  emotional  attitudes  and  motives  of 
others  by  copying  them  in  his  imitative  play;  he  puts 
himself  into  some  personal  relation  he  has  observed,  as- 
sumes the  part  of  parent  or  teacher  or  elder  sister,  makes 
some  smaller  child,  a  dog,  a  cat,  or  a  doll,  stand  for  him- 
self, and  acts  out  his  part,  so  realising  more  fully  the 
meaning  of  the  behaviour  of  other  persons.  In  this  way 
the  content  of  his  idea  of  his  self  and  of  its  capacities 
for  action  and  feeling  grows  hand  in  hand  with  his  ideas 
of  other  selves ;  features  of  other  selves,  whether  capaci- 
ties for  bodily  action  or  emotional  expression,  having 
first  been  observed  without  understanding  of  their  inner 
significance,  are  translated  into  personal  experience,  which 
is  then  read  back  into  the  other  selves,  giving  richer 
meaning  to  their  actions  and  expressions. 

And  it  is  not  only  in  play  that  this  imitation  of,  and 
consequent  fuller  realisation  of  the  m^eaning  of,  the  be- 
haviour of  others  goes  on.  It  is  carried  out  also  in  the 
serious  relations  of  daily  life,  as  when  the  little  girl  of 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      191 

five  or  six  years  talks  to,  plays  with,  comforts,  or  re- 
proves a  younger  child  in  almost  exact  imitation  of  her 
mother. 

In  this  v^^ay  the  child's  idea  of  his  self  early  comes  to 
be  the  idea,  not  merely  of  his  body  and  of  certain  bodily 
and  mental  capacities,  but  also  of  a  system  of  relations 
between  his  self  and  other  selves.  Now,  the  attitudes  of 
other  persons  towards  him  are  more  or  less  freely  ex- 
pressed by  them  in  praise,  reproof,  gratitude,  reproach, 
anger,  pleasure  or  displeasure,  and  so  forth.  Hence,  as 
he  rapidly  acquires  insight  into  the  meaning  of  these  at- 
titudes, he  constantly  sees  himself  in  the  reflected  light 
of  their  ideas  and  feelings  about  him,  a  light  that  colours 
all  his  idea  of  his  self  and  plays  a  great  part  in  building 
up  and  shaping  that  idea;  that  is  to  say,  he  gets  his  idea 
of  his  self  in  large  part  by  accepting  the  ideas  of  him- 
self that  he  finds  expressed  by  those  about  him.  The 
process  is  well  illustrated  by  the  case  of  the  unfortunate 
child  who  is  constantly  scolded  and  told  that  he  is  a^ 
naughty  boy.^  Under  these  conditions  the  normal  child 
very  soon  accepts  these  oft-repeated  suggestions,  learns 
to  regard  himself  as  a  naughty  boy,  and  plays  the  part 
thus  assigned  to  him.  Similarly,  if  he  finds  himiself  con- 
stantly regarded  as  clever,  or  irresistibly  charming,  or  in 
any  other  light,  he  can  hardly  fail  to  regard  himself  in 
the  same  way,  and  the  idea  of  his  self  moulded  in  this 
way  by  his  social  environment  affects  his  conduct  accord- 
ingly. 

The  child's  self-consciousness  is,  then,  nourished  and* 
moulded  by  the  reflection  of  himself  that  he  finds  in  the 
minds  of  his  fellows.    It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out 
that  this  is  true,  not  only  of  the  mental  but  also  of  the 
bodily  self ;  each  of  us  gets  some  idea,  more  or  less  ac- 

'  Cf.  Kipling's  story,  "Baa-baa,  Black  Sheep." 


192  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

curate,  of  his  bodily  appearance  to  others,  a  process  in 
which  civilised  folk  are  greatly  aided  by  the  use  of  the 
mirror.  The  vain  person  is  one  who  is  constantly  pre- 
occupied with  this  idea  of  his  bodily  or  total  appearance 
in  the  eyes  of  others,  and  who  never  achieves  so  stable 
an  estimate  of  himself,  his  powers,  and  appearance  as  to 
be  indifferent  to  the  regards  of  casual  acquaintances. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  consider  the  transition 
from  the  second  to  the  third  stage  of  conduct,  from  that 
/in  which  conduct  is  regulated  chiefly  by  the  expectation 
\>i  rewards  and  punishments,  and  in  which  the  subject's 
attitude  in  controlling  any  impulse  is  expressed  by  the 
phrase,  I  must  or  must  not  do  this,  to  that  in  which  the 
mere  expectation  of  social  praise  or  blame  suffices  to 
regulate  conduct. 

The  oppositions  and  prohibitions  that  a  child  encoun- 
ters in  his  social  relations  are  not  less  important  for  the 
development  of  his  personality  than  his  sympathetic 
apprehension  of  the  mental  states  of  others.  They  serve 
especially  to  define  and  consolidate  his  ideas  of  his  self 
and  of  other  selves.  When,  for  example,  his  desire  to 
perform  some  particular  action  meets  some  personal  op- 
position that  his  best  efforts  fail  to  break  down,  and 
especially  if  such  insuperable  opposition  is  consistently 
and  unfailingly  forthcoming,  he  gets  both  a  more  vivid 
idea  of  the  personality  of  his  opponent  and  a  fuller  sense 
of  the  social  import  of  his  own  actions.  And  with  his 
earliest  experience  of  law,  in  the  form  of  general  pro- 
hibitions vfpheld  by  all  members  of  his  social  environ- 
ment, the  child  makes  a  further  step  in  each  of  these  di- 
rections. It  is  generally  necessary  that  law  shall  be  en- 
forced at  first  by  physical  strength,  and  that  his  regard 
for  it  shall  be  encouraged  by  physical  punishment;  for 
the  first  step  towards  moral  conduct  is  the  control  of  the 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     193 

immediate  impulse,  and  fear  of  punishment  can  secure 
this  control  of  the  immediate  impulse  by  a  more  remote 
motive  at  an  earlier  age  than  it  can  otherwise  be  ef- 
fected, fear  being  the  great  inhibitor  of  action.  Law 
takes  at  first  the  form  of  specific  prohibition  of  some 
particular  kind  of  action,  and  by  punishment  the  child 
is  taught  to  hold  himself  accountable  for  any  action  of 
that  kind.  By  the  extension  of  rules  in  number  and 
generality  his  sense  of  accountability  to  others  is  ex- 
tended, and  he  is  taught  to  conceive  himself  more  and 
more  clearly  as  an  agent  in  fixed  relations  to  other  agents, 
as  a  member  of  a  social  system  in  which  he  has  a  defined 
position ;  and  the  habit  of  control,  and  of  reflection  before 
action,  is  thus  initiated.  In  all  this  a  child  is  in  all  prob- 
ability recapitulating  the  history  oi  social  evolution, 
which,  it  would  seem,  must  have  begun  by  the  enforce- 
ment by  the  community,  or  by  the  strongest  member  of  it, 
of  rules  of  conduct  upon  each  member,  rules  which  in 
primitive  societies  were  probably  prescribed  by  rigid 
customs  of  unknown  origin  rather  than  by  the  will  or 
caprice  of  individuals. 

But  social  conduct  founded  only  upon  the  fear  of 
punishment,  on  the  sense  of  accountability,  and  on  the 
habits  formed  under  their  influence,  is  the  conduct  of  a 
slave.  It  can  hardly  be  called  moral,  even  if  laws  are 
never  broken  and  all  prohibitions  and  injunctions  are 
observed.  And,  though  the  sense  of  accountability 
founded  on  fear  of  punishment  may  effectively  prevent 
breaches  of  the  law,  it  is  of  but  little  effect  in  promo- 
ting positive  well-doing. 

Why  is  our  conduct  so  profoundly  influenced  by  pub- 
lic opinion  ?  How  do  we  come  to  care  so  much  for  the 
praise  and  blame,  the  approval  and  disapproval,  of  our 
fellow-men  ?    This  is  the  principal  problem  that  we  have 


194  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

to  solve  if  we  would  understand  how  men  are  led  to  con- 
trol their  impulses  in  a  way  that  renders  possible  the 
life  of  complexly  organised  societies.  For  the  praise  and 
blame  of  our  fellows,  especially  as  expressed  by  the  voice 
of  public  opinion,  are  the  principal  and  most  effective 
sanctions  of  moral  conduct  for  the  great  mass  of  men; 
without  them  few  of  us  would  rise  above  the  level  of 
mere  law-abidingness,  the  mere  avoidance  of  acts  on 
which  legal  punishment  surely  follows ;  and  the  strong 
regard  for  social  approval  and  disapproval  constitutes 
an  essential  stage  of  the  progress  to  the  higher  plane 
of  morality,  the  plane  of  obligation  to  an  ideal  of  con^ 
duct. 

The  strength  of  the  regard  men  pay  to  public  opinion, 
the  strength  of  their  desire  to  secure  the  approval  and 
avoid  the  disapproval  of  their  fellow-men,  goes  beyond 
all  rational  grounds;  it  cannot  be  wholly  explained  as 
due  to  regard  for  their  own  actual  welfare  or  material 
prosperity,  or  to  the  anticipation  of  the  pain  or  the 
pleasure  that  would  be  felt  on  hearing  men's  blame  or 
praise.  For,  as  we  know,  some  men,  otherwise  rational 
and  sane  enough,  are  prepared  to  sacrifice  ease  and  en- 
joyments of  every  kind — in  fact,  all  the  good  things  of 
life — if  only  tliey  may  achieve  posthumous  fame ;  that  is 
to  say,  their  conduct  is  dominated  by  the  desire  that  men 
shall  admire  or  praise  them  long  after  they  themselves 
shall  have  become  incapable  of  being  affected  pleasurably 
or  painfully  by  any  expression  of  the  opinions  of  others. 
The  great  strength  in  so  many  men  of  this  regard  for  the 
opinions  of  others  and  the  almost  universal  distribution 
of  it  in  some  degree  may,  then,  fairly  be  said  to  pre- 
sent the  most  important  and  difficult  of  the  psychological 
problems  that  underlie  the  theory  of  morals.  Some  of 
the  mjoralists  have  simply  ignored  this  problem,  with  the 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      195 

result  that  their  moralising  is  largely  vitiated  and  made 
unreal.  It  is  perhaps  worth  while  to  consider  an  ex- 
ample of  procedure  of  this  kind,  provided  by  a  very  re- 
spectable writer  on  morals ;  the  late  Dr.  T.  Fowler^  wrote : 
"Human  nature,  in  its  normal  conditions,  is  so  consti- 
tuted that  the  remorse  felt,  when  we  look  back  upon  a 
wrong  action,  far  outweighs  any  pleasure  we  may  have 
derived  from  it,  just  as  the  satisfaction  with  which  we 
look  back  upon  a  right  action  far  more  than  compen- 
sates for  any  pain  with  which  it  may  have  been  at- 
tended." The  author  went  on  to  say  that  these  pains  and 
pleasures  of  reflection  on  our  past  actions  are  more 
intense  than  any  other  pains  and  pleasures,  and  he  pro- 
posed to  regard  them  as  tJie  moral  sanction.  According 
to  this  author's  view  all  moral  conduct  arises,  then,  from 
an  enlightened  and  nicely  calculating  hedonism;  for  he 
represents  the  strongest  motives  to  right  conduct  as  be- 
ing the  desire  of  this  greatest  pleasure  and  the  aver- 
sion from  this  greatest  pain. 

This  is  a  fair  example  of  the  procedure  of  a  moralist 
who  has  got  beyond  the  old-fashioned  popular  doctrine 
of  the  conscience  as  a  mysterious  faculty  that  tells  us 
what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong  and  impels  us  to  pur- 
sue the  right,  but  who  lacks  psychological  insight.  Of 
course,  if  the  statement  quoted  above  were  true,  the 
moralist  would  be  justified  in  simply  recognising  the 
fact  and  in  leaving  it  to  the  psychologist  to  explain,  if 
he  could,  how  human  nature  had  acquired  this  remark- 
able constitution.  But  the  statement  is  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  notorious  facts,  and  in  reducing  all  morality  to 
hedonism  it  grossly  libels  human  nature.  The  finest 
moral  acts  do  not  proceed  from  this  desire  of  the 
pleasure   of   self-satisfied   retrospection,    nor    from   the 

^  In  "Progressive  Morality." 


196  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

aversion  from  the  pain  of  remorse.  When  the  patriot 
volunteers  for  the  forlorn  hope  and  goes  to  certain  death, 
he  cannot  be  seeking  the  pleasures  of  retrospective  self- 
approval,  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  he  is 
driven  on  only  by  fear  of  remorse.  Strong  and  fine 
characters,  when  forming  their  decisions  pay  Httle  or  no 
regard  to  the  prospect  of  these  pleasures  and  pains  of 
retrospection ;  while  in  the  mass  of  men  the  pain  of  re- 
morse for  undetected  lapses  from  morality  is  easily 
avoided  or  got  rid  of,  and  the  pleasure  of  self-approval 
for  virtues  unknown  to  others  is  comparatively  slight. 
The  most  that  can  be  admitted  is  that  in  certain  morbidly 
conscientious  persons  the  prospect  of  these  retrospective 
pleasures  and  pains  may  play  some  part  in  regulating  con- 
duct; and  it  may  be  added  that,  if  we  were  called  upon 
to  advise  in  the  designing  of  a  new  type  of  human  nature, 
we  might  be  tempted  to  recommend  that  it  should  be  con- 
stituted in  this  way,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  justice 
would  be  so  admirably  served;  for  each  right  or  wrong 
act  would  then  inevitably  bring  its  own  internal  reward  of 
pleasure  or  punishment  of  pain,  as  the  nursery  moralists, 
regardless  of  truth,  have  so  often  asserted  that  it  does. 
Such  a  constitution  of  human  nature  would  then  obvi- 
ate the  irreparable  injustices  of  this  life  which,  human 
nature  being  what  it  is,  constitute  its  darkest  feature,  and 
for  which  in  every  age  men  have  sought  to  provide  a 
remedy  in  some  system  of  external  rewards  and  punish- 
ments that  shall  be  distributed  in  this  life  or  another. 

We  cannot,  then,  consent  to  escape  the  difficulty  of 
this  problem  by  accepting  any  such  false  assumption  as 
to  the  normal  constitution  of  human  nature,  but  must 
seek  its  solution  in  the  development  of  the  self-regard- 
ing sentiment. 

There  are  two  principal  varieties  of  the  self-regarding 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      197 

sentiment,  which  we  may  distinguish  by  the  names! 
"pride"  and  "self-respect."  No  sharp  line  can  be  drawn 
between  them,  unless  we  restrict  the  name  "pride"  to  one 
extreme  type  of  the  sentiment  that  is  but  rarely  met 
with;  in  popular  speech  the  forms  of  self-respect  that 
approximate  to  this  type  are  commonly  called  pride. 
Pride,  taking  the  word  in  the  narrow  and  strict  sense,  is 
a  simpler  sentiment  than  self-respect,  and  we  may  with 
advantage  consider  it  first. 

Imagine  the  son  of  a  powerful  and  foolish  prince  to 
be  endowed  with  great  capacities  and  to  have  in  great 
strength  the  instinct  of  self-display  with  its  emotion  of 
positive  self-feeling.  Suppose  that  he  is  never  checked, 
or  corrected,  or  criticised,  but  is  allowed  to  lord  it  over 
all  his  fellow-creatures  without  restraint.  The  self- 
regarding  sentiment  of  such  a  child  would  almost  nec- 
essarily take  the  form  of  an  unshakable  pride,  a  pride 
constantly  gratified  by  the  attitudes  of  deference,  grati- 
tude, and  admiration,  of  his  social  environment;  the 
only  dispositions  that  would  become  organised  in  this 
sentiment  of  pride  would  be  those  of  positive  self-feeling 
or  elation  and  of  anger  (for  his  anger  would  be  in- 
variably excited  when  any  one  failed  to  assume  towards 
him  the  attitude  of  subjection  or  deference).  His  self- 
consciousness  might  be  intense  and  very  prominent,  but 
it  would  remain  poor  in  content ;  for  he  could  make 
little  progress  in  self-knowledge ;  he  would  have  little  oc- 
casion to  hear,  or  to  be  interested  in,  the  judgments  of 
others  upon  himself ;  and  he  would  seldom  be  led  to  re- 
flect upon  his  own  character  and  conduct.  The  only  in- 
fluences that  could  moralise  a  man  so  endowed  and  so 
brought  up  would  be  either  religious  teaching,  which 
might  give  him  the  sense  of  a  power  greater  than  him- 
self  to   whom   he   was   accountable,   or   a   very   strong 


198  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

natural  endowment  of  the  tender  emotion  and  its  al- 
truistic impulse,  or  a  conjunction  of  these  two  influences. 

A  man  in  whom  the  self -regarding  sentiment  had  as- 
sumed this  form  would  be  incapable  of  being  humbled — 
his  pride  could  only  be  mortified ;  that  is  to  say,  any  dis- 
play of  his  own  shortcomings  or  any  demonstration  of 
the  superiority  of  another  to  himself  could  cause  a  pain- 
ful check  to  his  positive  self-feeling  and  a  consequent 
anger,  but  could  give  rise  neither  to  shame  nor  to  humilia- 
tion, nor  to  any  affective  state,  such  as  admiration,  grati- 
tude, or  reverence,  in  which  negative  self-feeling  plays 
a  part.  And  he  would  be  indifferent  to  moral  praise 
or  blame;  for  the  disposition  of  negative  self-feeling 
would  have  no  place  in  his  self-regarding  sentiment ;  and 
negative  self-feeling,  which  renders  us  observant  of  the 
attitudes  of  others  towards  ourselves  and  receptive  to- 
wards their  opinions,  is  one  of  the  essential  conditions  of 
the  influence  of  praise  and  blame  upon  us. 

In  many  men  whose  moral  training  has  been  grossly 
defective  the  self-regarding  sentiment  approximates  to 
this  type  of  pure  pride ;  such  men  may  revel  in  the  admi- 
ration, flattery,  and  gratitude  of  others,  but  they  re- 
main indifferent  to  moral  approval;  they  may  be  pain- 
fully affected  by  scorn  or  ridicule,  and  but  Httle  by  moral 
censure.  And  for  most  of  us  the  admiration  and  the 
scorn  or  ridicule  of  others  remain  stronger  spurs  to  our 
self-feeling  than  praise  or  blame,  and  still  more  so  than 
mere  approval  and  disapproval. 

But  the  self-regarding  sentiment  of  the  man  of 
normally  developed  moral  nature  differs  from  pride  in 
that  it  comprises  the  disposition  of  negative  self-feeling 
as  well  as  that  of  positive  self-feeling;  it  is  the  presence 
of  this  disposition  within  the  sentiment  that  distinguishes 
self-respect  from  pride.     We  have  seen  that  negative 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     199 

self-feeling  is  normally  evoked  by  the  presence  of  any 
person  who  makes  upon  us  an  impression  of  power 
greater  than  our  own,  and  that  its  imfpulse  is  to  assume 
an  attitude  of  submission  towards  that  person,  an  attitude 
which  becomes  in  the  child,  as  his  intellectual  powers 
develop,  an  attitude  of  receptivity,  of  imitativeness  and 
suggestibility.  The  main  condition  of  the  incorporation 
of  this  disposition  in  the  self-regarding  sentiment  is  the 
exercise  of  authority  over  the  child  by  his  elders.  At 
first  this  authority  necessarily  demonstrates  its  superior 
power  by  means  of  physical  force,  later  by  means  of  re- 
wards and  punishments.  On  each  occasion  that  the  ex- 
ercise of  personal  authority  over  the  child  makes  him 
aware  of  a  superior  and  inflexible  power  to  which  he 
must  submit,  his  negative  self- feeling  is  evoked;  then 
his  idea  of  self  in  relation  to  that  person  becomes  ha- 
bitually accompanied  and  suffused  by  this  emotion  in 
however  slight  a  degree,  and  he  habitually  assumes  to- 
wards that  person  the  attitude  of  submission.  Thus 
the  disposition  of  this  emotion  becomes  incorporated  ii| 
the  self-regarding  sentiment.  Thereafter  all  persons  fall 
for  the  child  mto  one  or  other  of  two  classes ;  in  the  one' 
class  are  those  who  impress  him  as  beings  of  superior 
power,  who  evoke  his  negative  self-feeling,  and  towards 
whom  he  is  submissive  and  receptive ;  in  the  other  classf 
are  those  whose  presence  evokes  his  positive  self-feelj 
ing  and  towards  whom  he  is  self-assertive  and  masterful! 
just  because  they  fail  to  impress  him  as  beings  superior  t^ 
himself.  As  his  powers  develop  and  his  knowledge  in- 
creases, persons  who  at  first  belonged  to  the  former  class 
are  transferred  to  the  latter;  he  learns,  or  thinks  he 
learns,  the  limits  of  their  powers;  he  no  longer  shrinks 
from  a  contest  with  them,  and,  every  time  he  gains  the 
advantage  in  any  such  contest,  their  power  of  evoking 


200  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

his  negative  self-feeling  diminishes,  until  it  fails  com- 
pletely. When  that  stage  is  reached  his  attitude  towards 
them  is  reversed,  it  becomes  self-assertive;  for  their 
presence  evokes  his  positive  self-feeling.  In  this  way  a 
child  of  good  capacities,  in  whom  the  instinct  of  self-as- 
sertion is  strong,  works  his  way  up  the  social  ladder. 
Each  of  the  wider  social  circles  that  he  successively  en- 
ters— the  circle  of  his  playmates,  of  his  school- fellows, 
of  his  college,  of  his  profession — impresses  him  at  first 
with  a  sense  of  a  superior  power,  not  only  because  each 
circle  comprises  individuals  older  than  himself  and  of 
greater  reputation,  but  also  because  each  is  in  some  de- 
gree an  organised  whole  that  disposes  of  a  collective 
power  whose  nature  and  limits  are  at  first  unknown  to  the 
newly-admitted  member.  But  within  each  such  circle  he 
rapidly  finds  his  level,  finds  out  those  to  whom  he  must 
submit  and  those  towards  whom  he  may  be  self-assertive. 
Thus,  when  he  enters  a  great  school,  the  sixth-form 
boys  may  seem  to  him  god-like  beings  whose  lightest  word 
is  law ;  and  even  the  boys  who  have  been  but  a  little  while 
in  the  school  will  at  first  impress  him  and  evoke  his 
negative  self-feeling  by  reason  of  their  familiarity  with 
many  things  strange  to  him  and  in  virtue  of  their  as- 
sured share  in  the  collective  power  of  the  whole  society. 
But,  when  he  himself  has  reached  the  sixth  form,  or  per- 
haps is  captain  of  the  school,  how  completely  reversed 
is  this  attitude  of  submissive  receptivity !  When  he  en- 
ters college,  the  process  begins  again ;  the  fourth-year 
men,  with  their  caps  and  their  colours  and  academic  dis- 
tinctions, are  now  his  gods,  and  even  the  dons  may 
dominate  his  imagination.  But  at  the  end  of  his  fourth 
year,  after  a  successful  career  in  the  schools  and  the 
playing  fields,  how  changed  again  is  his  attitude  towards 
his  college  society!     The  dons  he  regards  with  kindly 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     201 

tolerance,  the  freshmen  with  hardly  disguised  disdain  ; 
and  very  few  remain  capable  of  evoking  his  negative 
self-feehng — perhaps  a  "blue,"  or  a  "rugger-interna- 
tional," or  a  don  of  world-wide  reputation ;  for  the  rest — 
he  has  comprehended  them,  grasped  their  limits,  labelled 
them,  and  dismissed  them  to  the  class  that  ministers  to 
his  positive  self-feeling.  And  so  he  goes  out  into  the 
great  world  to  repeat  the  process  and  to  carry  it  as  far  as 
his  capacities  will  enable  him  to  do.^ 

But  if  once  authority,  wielding  punishment  and  re- 
ward, has  awakened  negative  self-feeling  and  caused  its 
incorporation  in  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  that  emo- 
tion may  be  readily  evoked ;  and  there  is  always  one 
power^  that  looms  up  vaguely  and  largely  behind  all  in- 
dividuals— the  power  of  society  as  a  whole — which,  by 
reason  of  its  indefinable  vastness,  is  better  suited  than  all 
others  to  evoke  this  emotion  and  this  attitude.  The  child 
comes  gradually  to  understand  his  position  as  a  member 
of  a  society  indefinitely  larger  and  more  powerful  than 
any  circle  of  his  acquaintances,  a  society  which  with  a 
collective  voice  and  irresistible  power  distributes  re- 
wards and  punishments,  praise  and  blame,  and  formu- 
lates its  approval  and  disapproval  in  universally  accepted 
maxims.  This  collective  voice  appeals  to  the  self-re- 
garding sentiment,  humbles  or  elates  us,  calls  out  our 

*  Professor  Baldwin  has  well  described  this  process,  although 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  recognised  the  two  instincts  which, 
according  to  the  view  here  taken,  are  the  all-important  factors. 
See  "Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  in  Mental  Development," 
part  I.,  chap.  i. 

'  I  leave  out  of  account  here  religious  conceptions,  which  for 
many,  perhaps  most,  persons  play  this  all-important  part  in 
developing  the  self-regarding  sentiment;  not  because  they  are 
not  of  great  social  importance,  but  because  the  principles  in- 
volved are  essentially  similar  to  those  dealt  with  in  this  passage. 


202  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

shame  or  self-satisfaction,  with  even  greater  effect  than 
the  personal  authorities  of  early  childhood,  and  gradu- 
ally supplants  them  more  and  more.  And,  when  any  in- 
dividual passes  upon  us  a  well-founded  judgment  of 
moral  approval  or  disapproval,  he  wields  this  power; 
and,  though  he  may  be  personally  our  inferior,  his  ex- 
pressions may  influence  us  profoundly,  because  we  realise 
that  his  moral  judgment  voices  the  collective  judgment 
of  all-powerful  society. 

The  exercise  of  inflexible  authority  over  the  child  pre- 
vents, then,  his  self-regarding  sentiment  taking  the  form 
of  pride  in  the  strict  sense,  pride  that  acknowledges  no 
superior,  that  knows  no  shame,  and  is  indifferent  to 
moral  approval  and  disapproval;  it  gives  the  sentiment 
the  form  of  a  self-respect  that  is  capable  of  humility,  of 
the  receptive  imitative  attitude  of  negative  self-feeling; 
and,  by  so  doing,  it  renders  the  developing  individual 
capable  of  profiting  by  example  and  precept,  by  advice 
and  exhortation,  by  moral  approval  and  disapproval. 

Does,  then,  the  incorporation  of  negative  self-feeling 
in  the  self -regarding  sentiment  suffice  to  explain  the 
strength  of  our  regard  for  public  opinion,  for  the  praise 
and  blame  of  our  fellows?  Some  further  explanation 
is,  I  think,  required.  For  we  can  hardly  assume  that  the 
two  instincts  of  self-display  and  self-subjection,  which 
respectively  impel  us  to  seek  and  to  avoid  the  notice  of 
our  fellows,  impel  us  also  directly  to  seek  approval  and 
avoid  disapproval.  It  might  well  be  contended  that  posi- 
tive self-feeling  seeks  merely  to  draw  the  attention  of 
others  to  the  self,  no  matter  what  be  the  nature  of  the 
regards  attracted;  that  it  finds  its  satisfaction  simply  in 
the  fact  of  the  self  being  noticed  by  others.  There  is 
much  in  the  behaviour  of  human  beings  to  justify  this 
view — for  example,  the  large  number  of  men  who  seek, 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      203 

and  who  are  gratified  by,  mere  notoriety,  some  of  whom 
will  even  commit  criminal  acts  in  order  to  secure  no- 
toriety; or  again,  the  large  number  of  people  whose  dress 
is  clearly  designed  to  attract  attention,  but  which,  even 
by  the  most  disordered  imagination,  can  hardly  be  sup- 
posed to  excite  admiration  or  approval;  or  again,  the 
curiously  great  satisfaction  most  of  us  find  in  seeing  our 
names  in  a  newspaper  or  in  print  of  any  kind.  We  have 
to  ask.  Do  the  many  facts  of  this  order  imply  perversion 
of  instinct,  or  are  they  the  outcome  of  its  primitive  and 
natural  mode  of  operation?  It  is  not  easy  to  decide;  but 
it  is  at  any  rate  clear  that  the  satisfaction  of  the  im- 
pulse is  greater  when  the  regards  of  others  are  admiring 
regards,  or  such  as  to  express  in  any  way  the  recogni- 
tion of  our  superiority  in  any  respect.  We  shall  prob- 
ably be  nearest  the  truth  if  we  say  that  the  impulse  of 
positive  self-feeling  primitively  finds  its  satisfaction  when 
the  attitude  of  others  towards  us  is  that  of  negative  self- 
feeling,  the  normal  attitude  of  men  in  the  presence  of  one 
whom  they  recognise  as  superior  to  themselves.  But  even 
if  this  be  granted,  something  more  is  needed  to  account 
for  our  great  regard  for  praise  and  approval.  Now,  the 
effect  upon  us  of  praise  and  of  approval  is  complex ; 
they  do  not,  like  admiration,  simply  bring  satisfaction  to 
our  positive  self-feeling;  in  so  far  as  praise  is  accepted 
as  praise,  it  implies  our  recognition  of  the  superiority  of 
him  who  praises  and  an  attitude  of  submission  towards 
him.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  all  may  admire  a  great 
man  without  impertinence,  and  that  he  may  derive 
pleasure  from  their  admiration ;  whereas  it  is  rightly  felt 
to  be  an  impertinence  for  any  one  to  praise  his  superior 
in  any  art  or  department  of  activity ;  and  the  superior  is 
apt  to  resent  praise  coming  from  such  a  quarter,  rather 
than  to  be  pleased  by  it.    It  is  for  him  to  praise  if  he  so 


204  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

chooses.  That  is  to  say,  since  our  acceptance  of  praise  in- 
volves the  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  him  who 
praises,  praise  evokes  our  negative  self-feeling;  but  since 
it  is  an  acknowledgment  by  our  superior  of  our  merit,  it 
also  elates  us ;  in  other  words,  it  evokes  that  state  of 
bashfulness  in  which  the  impulses  and  emotions  of  the 
two  instincts  are  imperfectly  combined,  but  a  bashful- 
ness that  is  highly  pleasant  because  both  impulses  are  in 
process  of  attaining  satisfaction.  And  moral  approval, 
embodying  as  it  does  the  verdict  of  society  upon  us,  pro- 
vokes a  like  complex  satisfaction. 

Blame  and  disapproval  also  are  apt  to  produce  a 
similarly  complex  effect.  They  check  the  impulse  of 
self-assertion  and  evoke  the  impulse  of  submission;  and 
the  resulting  state  ranges,  according  as  one  or  other  of 
these  effects  predominates,  from  an  angry  resentment, 
in  which  negative  self-feeling  is  lacking,  through  shame 
and  bashfulness  of  many  shades,  to  a  state  of  repentance 
in  which  the  principal  element  is  negative  self-feeling, 
and  which  may  derive  a  certain  sweetness  from  the  com- 
pleteness of  submission  to  the  power  that  rebukes  us, 
a  sweetness  which  is  due  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  impulse 
of  submission. 

The  organisation  of  these  two  dispositions  within  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  renders  us  capable  of  this  range 
of  moral  emotions;  but  still  something  more  is  needed 
to  explain  the  full  magnitude  of  the  effects  of  praise  and 
blame,  or  of  the  mere  anticipation  of  them.  We  may 
imagine,  and,  I  think,  we  may  also  observe,  persons  in 
whom  the  sentiment  is  strong  and  whom  it  renders  very 
sensitive  to  the  opinions  of  others,  yet  whose  conduct  is 
not  effectually  controlled  by  the  sentiment ;  for  these 
persons  are  content  to  oscillate  between  the  luxury  of 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS      205 

the  elation  induced  by  praise  and  the  lesser  luxury  of 
repentance  induced  by  blame. 

In  order  that  blame  and  disapproval  shall  exert  their 
full  deterrent  effects,  it  would  seem  that  some  other 
factor  or  factors  must  co-operate,  that  the  sentiment 
must  undergo  a  process  of  moralisation.  We  may  find 
one  such  factor  in  the  influence  of  punishment  during 
the  early  days  of  childhood.  Punishment  and  the  fear 
of  punishment  are  needed  by  most  of  us,  we  said,  to 
initiate  the  control  of  the  instinctive  impulses  and  the 
habit  of  reflection  before  action.  In  the  normal  course 
of  things  punishment  is  gradually  replaced  by  the  threat 
of  punishment  in  the  successively  milder  forms  of  the 
frown  and  angry  word,  the  severe  rebuke,  blame  com- 
bined perhaps  with  reproach,  and  moral  disapproval ; 
but  all  of  these  owe  something  of  their  effectiveness  to 
the  fact  that  they  retain  the  nature  of,  because  they  con- 
tinue to  produce  the  effects  of,  the  early  punishments ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  evoke  some  degree  of  fear;  for  in 
virtue  of  the  early  punishments  the  disposition  of  fear 
has  become  incorporated  in  the  self-regarding  sentiment, 
and  fear,  as  we  know,  is  the  great  inhibitor  of  action. 
Fear,  then,  once  incorporated  in  the  sentiment,  readily 
enters  into  and  colours  our  emotional  attitude  towards 
authority  in  whatever  form  we  meet  it,  renders  us  capable 
of  awe  and  reverence  in  our  personal  relations,  and  is  one 
of  the  principal  conditions  of  the  effectiveness  of  moral 
disapproval  as  a  regulator  of  conduct.^ 

It  is  possible  also  that  praise  and  approval  owe  some 
part  of  their  power  over  us  to  their  early  association 

'  It  may  seem  anomalous  that  fear  should  enter  into  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment ;  but  we  have  to  remember  that  the  ob- 
ject of  this  sentiment  is  not  merely  the  self,  but  rather  the  self 
in  relation  to  other  persons. 


2o6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

with  the  grosser  forms  of  reward,  which  they  gradually 
replace  as  the  moral  education  of  the  child  progresses. 
/  There  is  yet  another  factor  that  operates  in  very 
jvarious  degrees  in  different  persons  to  develop  their 
regard  for  praise  and  blame,  their  sensitiveness  towards 
Viioral  approval  and  disapproval.  It  is  what  we  have 
called  active  sympathy,  that  tendency  to  seek  to  share 
our  emotions  and  feelings  with  others  which,  as  we 
found,  is  rooted  in  primitive  or  passive  sympathy  and 
in  the  gregarious  instinct.  The  person  in  whom  this 
tendency  is  strong  cannot  bear  to  suffer  his  various 
affective  experiences  in  isolation;  his  joys  are  no  joys, 
his  pains  are  doubly  painful,  so  long  as  they  are  not 
shared  by  others ;  his  anger  or  his  moral  indignation, 
his  vengeful  emotion,  his  pity,  his  elation,  his  admira- 
tion, if  they  are  confined  to  his  own  bosom,  cannot  long 
endure  without  giving  rise  to  a  painful  desire  for  sym- 
pathy. Active  sympathy  impels  him,  then,  not  only  to 
seek  to  bring  the  feelings  and  emotions  of  his  fellows 
into  harmony  with  his  own,  but  also,  since  that  is  often 
impossible,  to  bring  his  own  into  harmony  with  theirs. 
Hence  he  finds  no  satisfaction  in  conduct  that  is  dis- 
pleasing to  those  about  him,  but  finds  it  in  conduct  that 
pleases  them,  even  though  it  be  such  as  would  otherwise 
be  distasteful,  repugnant,  or  painful  to  himself.  He 
finds  in  the  praise  of  his  fellows  evidence  that  his 
emotions  are  shared  by  them,  and  their  blame  or  dis- 
approval makes  him  experience  the  pain  of  isolation. 
To  many  children  this  sense  of  isolation,  of  being  cut 
off  from  the  habitual  fellowship  of  feeling  and  emotion, 
is,  no  doubt,  the  source  of  the  severest  pain  of  punish- 
ment; and  moral  disapproval,  even  though  not  formally 
expressed,  soon  begins  to  give  them  this  painful  sense  of 
isolation;   while   approval   gratifies   the   impulse   of  ac- 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     207 

tive  sympathy  and  makes  them  feel  at  one  with  their 
fellows.  And,  as  their  social  circle  widens  more  and 
more,  so  the  approval  and  disapproval  of  each  wider 
circle  give  greater  zest  to  their  elation  and  a  deeper  pain 
to  their  shame,  and  are  therefore  more  eagerly  sought 
after  or  shunned  in  virtue  of  this  impulse  of  active 
sympathy. 

The  two  principles  we  have  now  considered — on  the 
one  hand  the  influence  of  authority  or  power,  exercised 
primarily  in  bringing  rewards  and  punishments,  on  the 
other  hand  the  impulse  of  active  sympathy  towards  har- 
mony of  feeling  and  emotion  with  our  fellows — these 
two  principles  may  sufficiently  account,  I  think,  for  the 
moralisation  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  for  that 
regard  for  the  praise  and  blame  of  our  fellow-men  and 
for  moral  approval  and  disapproval  in  general,  which  is 
so  strong  in  most  of  us  and  which  plays  so  large  a  part  in 
shaping  our  sentiments,  our  character,  and  our  conduct. 
This  regard  leads  on  some  men  to  the  higher  plane  of 
conduct,  conduct  regulated  by  an  ideal  that  may  render 
them  capable  of  acting  in  the  way  they  believe  to  be 
right,  regardless  of  the  approval  or  disapproval  of  the 
social  environment  in  which  their  lives  are  passed. 

There  are,  of  course,  great  differences  between  men  as 
regards  the  delicacy  with  which  they  apprehend  the  at- 
titudes of  others  towards  them.  These  differences  are 
due  in  part  to  differences  of  intellectual  power,  but  in 
greater  part  to  differences  in  the  degree  of  development 
of  the  self-regarding  sentiment.  Any  man  in  whom  this 
sentiment  is  well  developed  will  be  constantly  observant 
of  the  signs  of  others'  feelings  in  regard  to  him,  and  so 
will  develop  his  powers  of  perceiving  and  interpreting 
the  signs  of  the  more  delicate  shades  of  feeling  that  do 
not  commonly  find  deliberate  expression.     On  the  other 


2o8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

hand,  one  whose  perceptions  are  dull  and  whose  self- 
regarding  sentiment  is  not  strong  will  be  moved  only 
by  the  coarser  expressions  of  general  approval  and 
disapproval,  by  open  praise  and  blame.  Of  two  such 
men,  the  one  will  be  said  in  common  speech  to  have  a 
sensitive  conscience,  and  the  other  to  have  a  less  delicate, 
or  a  relatively  defective,  conscience. 

Before  going  on  to  consider  the  higher  kind  of  con- 
duct, we  may  note  some  of  the  ways  in  which  conduct, 
while  remaining  upon  the  plane  of  regulation  by  the 
impulses  and  emotions  evoked  by  our  social  circle,  may 
be  complicated  by  altruistic  motives.  For,  just  as  upon 
the  purely  instinctive  plane  of  animal  hfe  the  parental  in- 
stinct may  impel  to  behaviour  from  which  we  cannot 
withhold  our  admiration,  so  it  may  do  upon  this  higher 
or  middle  plane  also,  working,  of  course,  in  more  subtle 
fashion. 

This  occurs  when  the  approval  and  the  disapproval  of 
others  move  us  not  merely  through  their  appeal  to  the 
self-regarding  sentiment,  but  also  because  we  see  that 
the  act  of  approval  is  pleasing,  and  the  act  of  disapproval 
painful,  to  him  who  approves  or  disapproves,  and  we 
desire  to  give  him  pleasure  and  to  avoid  giving  him 
pain.  This  kind  of  motive  implies  the  previous  growth 
of  a  reciprocal  sentiment  of  affection  between  the  parties 
concerned.  Therefore  it  can  never  efficiently  supply  the 
place  of  the  coarser  egoistic  motives  arising  out  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment.  Nevertheless,  within  the  family 
circle  or  other  intimate  community  it  constitutes  a  very 
effective  supplement  to  the  egoistic  motives.  The  con- 
duct of  affectionate  children  is  in  many  cases  very 
largely  regulated  by  this  motive  from  an  early  age. 
When  they  do  what  they  have  been  taught  to  believe  is 
right,  it  is  not  so  much   from  the  motive  of  securing 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     209 

praise  or  avoiding  blame,  as  from  that  of  giving  pleasure, 
or  avoiding  the  giving  of  pain,  to  those  they  love. 

This  is  a  kind  of  conduct  that  has  its  own  peculiar 
charm,  and  it  tends  to  the  development  of  a  very  delicate 
and  sympathetic  character,  though  a  narrow  one;  it 
cannot  lead  on  to  the  stronger  forms  of  character  and 
to  conduct  based  on  broad  moral  principles ;  and  it 
renders  the  person  in  whom  this  kind  of  motive  pre- 
dominates peculiarly  dependent  upon  the  natures  of  those 
to  whom  he  is  attached.  Little  girls  act  from  this  mo- 
tive far  more  commonly,  I  think,  than  do  boys;  the 
tendency  to  its  predominance  seems  to  be  one  of  the 
distinguishing  features  of  their  sex,  as  we  might  expect 
if  it  is  true  that,  as  we  argued  in  Chapter  IIL,  all  al- 
truistic conduct  has  its  root  and  origin  in  the  maternal 
instinct. 

The  motive  constituted  by  the  co-operation  of  this  al- 
truistic impulse  with  the  egoistic  motive  of  securing 
praise  or  avoiding  blame,  is  apt  to  reach  a  third  degree 
of  complication  by  the  addition  of  an  egoistic  motive  that 
is  secondary  to  the  altruistic.  When  a  child  acts  in  a 
way  that  secures  the  approval  of  his  mother  and  pleases 
her,  then,  apart  from  the  satisfaction  of  his  tender  im- 
pulse towards  her,  the  pleasure  that  he  derives  from  her 
approval  is  heightened  by  his  perception  of  her  pleasure 
in  his  conduct;  and  this  increase  of  his  own  pleasure 
may  have  one,  or  both,  of  two  sources — a  simpler  and 
a  more  complex.  It  may  come  by  way  of  that  primitive 
sympathetic  reaction  in  virtue  of  which  another's  ex- 
pression of  a  feeling  or  emotion  generates  the  same  feel- 
ing or  emotion  in  the  observer.^  There  are  persons,  in 
whom  this  primitive  sympathetic  tendency  is  very  strong, 
whose   kindly   conduct   to   those   about   them   proceeds 

^Cf.  Chapter  IV; 


2IO  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

largely  from  this  motive;  they  cannot  bear  to  see  dull, 
unhappy  faces  about  them,  for  to  do  so  depresses  them; 
they  desire  to  see  those  about  them  bright  and  joyous, 
because  that  renders  themselves  bright  and  joyous.  If 
such  a  person  is  in  a  position  to  influence  markedly  the 
welfare  of  those  by  whom  he  is  constantly  surrounded 
— if,  for  example,  he  is  the  head  of  a  family  or  the 
master  of  many  servants  who  live  in  close  contact  with 
him — his  conduct  towards  them  will  be  rendered  kindly 
and  beneficent  up  to  a  certain  point  by  the  desire  to  se- 
cure this  sympathetic  pleasure  and  to  avoid  sympathetic 
pain. 

The  more  complex  source  of  the  pleasure  that  con- 
stitutes this  tertiary  motive  to  kindly  conduct  is  the  sense 
of  being  the  source  of  the  pleasure  the  expressions  of 
which  we  observe  in  those  round  about  us.  The  impulse 
of  positive  self-feeling  finds  satisfaction  in  the  recog- 
nition by  the  recipients  of  our  bounty  of  the  fact  that 
our  actions  have  benefited  them,  especially  if  those  re- 
cipients exhibit  gratitude  and  deference,  or  even  merely 
a  lively  sense  of  favours  to  come.  George  Meredith's 
"Egoist"  is  a  fine  study  of  conduct  founded  predomi- 
nantly on  tlie  combination  of  the  desire  for  reflex  sympa- 
thetic pleasure  with  that  for  this  kind  of  satisfaction  of 
the  impulse  of  positive  self-feeHng;  and  many  another 
rich  man's  beneficence  derives  in  the  main  from  this  last 
source.  Such  conduct  is,  of  course,  thoroughly  egoistic, 
though  it  implies  a  disposition  in  which  the  primitive 
sympathetic  tendency  and  the  altruistic  impulse  are  pres- 
ent in  moderate  strength.  In  many  respects  such  conduct 
will  closely  resemble  altruistic  conduct ;  but  it  will  differ 
in  one  very  important  respect,  namely,  that  the  benef- 
icence arising  from  the  truly  altruistic  motive,  the  im- 
pulse of  the  tender  emotion,  knows  no  limits  and  may 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     211 

go  the  length  of  absolute  sacrifice,  even  of  life  and  of  all 
that  is  most  valued  in  life;  whereas  this  pseudo-altruistic 
motive  will  never  impel  a  man  to  sacrifice  things  the 
pain  of  the  loss  of  which  will  counterbalance  the  pleasure 
he  derives  from  contemplating  the  effects  of  his  benef- 
icent actions. 

Again,  this  pseudo-altruistic  motive  can  impel  a  man 
to  act  kindly  to  those  only  with  whom  he  is  in  personal 
contact — those  whose  pleasure  in,  and  whose  gratitude 
for,  his  gifts  and  kindly  attentions  he  can  observe.  To 
a  man  predominantly  swayed  by  this  motive  the  happi- 
ness or  misery  of  all  who  are  outside  his  circle  and  are 
not  obtruded  upon  his  attention  will  be  a  matter  of  in- 
difference ;  and  even  within  his  circle  such  a  man  will  be 
unjust,  and,  like  King  Lear,  will  shower  benefits  upon 
those  who  respond  most  readily  with  expressions  of 
pleasure  and  gratitude,  and  will  feel  resentment  against 
those  who  remain  unmoved.  And  his  conduct  will  exert 
a  deleterious  influence  upon  those  about  him,  will  en- 
courage flattery  and  toadying  in  some ;  but  it  will  pro- 
voke the  scorn  of  men  of  sterner  fibre,  if  they  are  able 
to  understand  his  motives. 

Upon  this  middle  plane  of  conduct,  and  alongside  the 
pseudo-altruistic  conduct  just  now  considered,  must  be 
ranged  also  the  conduct  proceeding  from  certain  quasi- 
altruistic  motives  which  arise  from  the  extension  of 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  and  are  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance for  the  life  of  societies. 

We  have  already  touched  upon  this  subject  in  de- 
scribing the  full-blown  parental  sentiment.  The  parental 
sentiment,  we  said,  is  apt  to  be  not  only  a  tender  senti- 
ment of  love  for  the  child,  but  to  be  comiplicated  by  an 
extension  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  to  him  and  to 


212  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

all  that  pertains  to  him,  owing  to  the  parent's  intellectual 
identification  of  the  child  with  himself. 

But  the  child  is  by  no  means  the  only  object  to  which 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  may  be,  and  very  com- 
monly is,  extended,  especially  in  men  in  whom  the  sympa- 
thetic tendency  and  the  gregarious  instinct  are  strong. 
After  the  child  the  family  as  a  whole,  both  in  the  past  and 
in  the  future  as  well  as  in  the  present,  is  the  object  to 
which  this  extension  is  most  readily  effected.  .  A  man 
realises,  more  especially  perhaps  in  societies  less  complex 
than  our  own,  that  the  family  of  which  he  is  a  part  has 
a  capacity  for  collective  suffering  and  collective  pros- 
perity, that  it  is  held  collectively  responsible  and  is  the 
collective  object  of  the  judgments,  emotions,  and  senti- 
ments of  other  men ;  he  recognises  that  he,  being  a  mem- 
ber of  the  whole,  is  in  part  the  object  of  all  these  re- 
gards. In  so  far  as  he  does  this,  all  these  attitudes  of 
other  men  appeal  to  his  self-regarding  sentiment,  evoke 
within  it  his  anger,  his  gratitude,  his  revenge,  his  posi- 
tive self-feeling,  his  shame.  Therefore  he  desires  that 
his  family  shall  prosper  and  shall  stand  well  in  the  eyes 
of  men;  and  this  desire  may  become  a  motive  hardly 
less  strong  than  the  care  for  his  own  welfare  and 
position.  The  mere  community  of  name  of  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  goes  a  long  way  to  bring  about  this 
identification  of  the  self  with  the  family  and  the  con- 
sequent extension  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  results 
which  are  described  by  the  popular  phrase,  "Blood  is 
thicker  than  water." 

And  this  extension  should  not,  and  usually  does  not, 
stop  short  at  the  family ;  in  primitive  societies  the  tribe 
and  the  clan,  which  are  the  collective  objects  of  the  re- 
gards of  other  tribes  and  clans,  become  also  the  objects 
of  this  sentiment ;  and  among  ourselves  the  growing  child 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS     213 

is  led  on  in  the  same  way  to  identify  himself  with,  and  to 
extend  his  self -regarding  sentiment  to,  his  school,  his  col- 
lege, his  town,  his  profession  as  a  class  or  collective 
unit,  and  finally  to  his  country  or  nation  as  a  whole.  It 
should  be  noted  that,  in  each  case,  the  extension  of  the 
sentiment  depends  upon  the  existence  of  the  object,  the 
school,  the  profession,  the  country,  as  one  object  among 
other  similar  objects,  having  to  those  others  relations 
similar  to  the  relations  between  persons,  and  being  made 
by  those  other  collective  units  and  by  men  in  general  the 
object  of  judgments,  emotions,  sentiments,  and  actions, 
that  are  capable  of  evoking  our  resentment,  our  elation, 
our  gratitude,  and  all  the  specifically  personal  emotions. 
So  long  as  any  such  collective  unit  has  no  such  "per- 
sonal" relations,  the  extension  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  to  it  can  hardly  take  place;  for  example,  it  is 
not  extended  to  the  nation  or  people  that  is  isolated 
from  all  others;  and  the  extended  sentiment  tends  to 
become  stronger  and  more  widely  distributed  the  more 
abundant  and  intense  are  the  interactions  of  the  nation 
with  others,  the  more  free  and  vigorous  become  inter- 
national rivalry  and  criticism ;  that  is  to  say,  our  patriotic 
self-knowledge  and  sentiment,  just  like  individual  self- 
knowledge  and  sentiment,  are  developed  by  constant  in- 
terplay with  other  similar  collective  selves ;  they  grow  in 
the  light  of  our  advancing  knov\'ledge  of  those  other 
selves  and  in  the  light  of  the  judgments  passed  by  them 
upon  our  collective  self  and  upon  one  another. 

From  this  kind  of  extended  self-regarding  sentiment, 
then,  there  may  spring  motives  to  conduct  that  may  in- 
volve individual  self-sacrifice ;  and,  if  the  sentiment  is 
strong,  these  motives  may  be  powerful  enough  to  over- 
come the  more  narrowly  self-regarding  motives ;  but  in 
the  main  they  work  in  harmony  with  these,  as  when 


214  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  patriot  soldier  in  giving  his  life  in  battle  brings  glory 
upon  himself  as  well  as  upon  his  country.^ 

These  quasi-altruistic  extensions  of  the  egoistic  senti- 
ment constitute  a  very  important  part  of  the  moral  equip- 
ment of  the  individual;  for  they  lead  to  the  subjection 
of  immediate  personal  ends  in  the  service  of  social  co- 
operation undertaken  to  secure  the  collective  ends  that 
individual  action  is  powerless  to  achieve.  They  enrich 
our  emotional  life  and  raise  our  emotions  and  conduct  to 
an  over-individual  plane. 

*  Like  the  fully  developed  parental  sentiment,  the  patriotism 
of  many  men  is  a  fusion  of  this  quasi-altruistic  extension  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  with  the  truly  altruistic  sentiment  of 
love. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  OF  SOCIAL  CONDUCT 

THE  regulation  of  conduct  by  regard  for  the  ap- 
proval and  disapproval  of  our  fellow-men  in  the 
way  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter  has  certain  limita- 
tions and  drawbacks  in  spite  of  its  supreme  importance 
for  the  great  mass  of  mankind. 

In  the  first  place  the  motives  involved  are  funda-^ 
mentally  egoistic,  although,  as  we  saw,  they  may  in  cer- 
tain cases  Ve  leavened  with  the  altruistic  impulse.  Sec-  | 
ondly,  the  approval  and  disapproval  of  our  social  circle  * 
cease  to  be  effective  sanctions  of  right  conduct,  as  soon 
as  we  can  be  quite  sure  that  our  lapse  from  the  standard 
demanded  of  us  Avill  never  be  known  to  those  in  whose 
minds  we  habitually  see  ourselves  reflected  and  to  whose 
approval  and  disapproval  we  attach  importance ;  or,  in 
other  words,  the  man  whose  right  conduct  rests  on  no 
higher  basis  than  this  sanction  will  not  conform  to  the 
accepted  code,  in  spite  of  opposing  desires,  when  he  is 
in  no  danger  of  being  "found  out."  In  order  to  remedy 
this  defect  of  the  sanction  of  public  opinion,  many  peo- 
ples have  supplemented  it  with  the  doctrine  of  an  all- 
seeing  eye,  of  a  power  that  can  observe  all  men's  deeds, 
however  carefully  concealed,  and  will  distribute  rewards 
and  punishments  either  in  this  life  or  another,  according 
as  these  deeds  conform  to,  or  transgress,  the  current  code 
of  society.     This  supplementary  sanction  has,  no  doubt, 

215 


2i6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

proved  very  effective  at  a  certain  stage  of  the  moral  evolu- 
tion of  societies.  But  it  must  be  recognised  that  the 
motives  to  which  this  sanction  appeals  are  lower  than 
the  motives  through  which  public  opinion  affects  con- 
duct; for  it  commonly  relies  upon  rewards  and  punish- 
ments of  a  lower  type  than  public  approval  and  disap- 
proval. Further,  since  the  rewards  offered  and  the  pun- 
ishments threatened  are  generally  extremely  remote  in 
time  and  of  uncertain  character,  and  since  some  uncer- 
tainty as  to  their  advent  is  apt  to  prevail,  they  have  to 
be  described  as  of  very  great  magnitude  if  they  are  to 
be  effective  sanctions  of  conduct;  and  the  promise  of 
disproportionately  large  rewards  or  punishments  is  in  it- 
self demoralising. 
\  A  third  limitation  of  public  opinion  as  the  principal 
sanction  of  right  conduct  is  that  the  conduct  based  upon 
it  is  entirely  dependent  on  the  nature  of  the  moral  tra- 
dition and  custom  of  the  society  in  which  the  individual 
grows  up.  Every  society  has  its  own  code,  and  regards 
as  absurd  or  even  wicked  those  features  of  other  codes 
in  which  they  differ  from  its  own.  Illustrations  of  this 
fact  abound  in  modern  works  on  morals.  Consider  the 
case  of  the  Fijian  who  regards  it  as  his  duty  to  slay  his 
parents,  when  they  attain  a  certain  age,  and  gives  them 
a  tender  and  dutiful  embrace  before  despatching  them 
to  the  grave ;  or  of  certain  tribes  of  Borneo,  among  whom 
the  taking  of  a  head  of  man,  woman,  or  child,  even  by 
methods  involving  perfidious  treachery,  is  the  surest  road 
to  popular  esteem  ^ ;  or,  again,  the  case  of  men  of  the 
same  region  who  feel  shame  if  seen  by  a  stranger  with- 
al would  ask  the  reader  to  refrain  from  taking  this  remark  as 
applicable  to  all  the  peoples  of  Borneo.  Most  of  these  much 
maligned  savages  are  quite  incapable  of  such  conduct,  which  is 
peculiar  to  the  Sea  Dayaks  or  Ibans. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     217 

out  the  narrow  bands  that  they  commonly  wear  just  be- 
low the  knee,  although  no  other  garment  is  considered 
absolutely  indispensable. 

The  sanction  of  public  opinion,  then,  provides  no  guar- 
antee against  gross  defects  and  absurdities  of  conduct; 
and — what  is  of  more  importance — it  contains  within 
itself  no  principle  of  progress,  but  tends  rather  to  pro- 
duce rigid  customs  whose  only  changes  are  apt  to  be 
degenerative  distortions  of  elements  once  valuable. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  ways  in  which  some  men 
advance  to  a  plane  of  conduct  higher  than  that  regulated 
by  the  approval  and  disapproval  of  their  social  circle. 

As  the  young  child's  sphere  of  social  relations  widens, 
he  finds  that  certain  of  the  rules  of  the  family  circle  are 
everywhere  upheld,  that  the  breaking  of  them  brings  uni- 
versal disapproval.  In  primitive  societies,  in  which  cus- 
tom is  usually  extremely  rigid  and  well  defined  and  is 
unquestioned  by  any  member  of  the  society,  this  is  true 
of  all  the  current  rules  of  conduct;  the  breach  of  any 
one  brings  universal  disapproval.  If  the  development  of 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  has  been  initiated  in  normal 
fashion  by  the  exercise  of  authority  over  the  child  within 
the  family  circle,  no  boy  or  man  can  bear  up  against 
universal  disapproval,  unless  he  has  found  some  higher 
source  of  moral  guidance;  hence  we  find  that  in  many 
primitive  or  savage  societies  the  rules  of  conduct,  posi- 
tive and  negative,  prescribed  by  custom  are  scrupulously 
observed  by  all  members. 

In  modern  civilised  societies,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
child  is  generally  subjected  in  his  early  years  to  much 
more  numerous  and  more  strictly  enforced  rules  than  the 
savage  child  ever  knows.  But,  when  he  emerges  from 
his  home  into  a  wider  social  sphere,  he  finds  that  some 
only  of  these  rules,  such  as  those  against  theft  and  mur- 


2i8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

der,  are  maintained  by  the  general  voice  of  society,  and 
are  embodied  in  public  law;  these  accordingly  he  contin- 
ues to  accept  and  observe.  Others  of  his  nursery  rules, 
he  finds,  are  not  at  all  enforced  by  the  opinion  and  feel- 
ing of  the  social  circles  in  which  he  moves ;  while  as  re- 
gards others,  again,  he  discovers  that  they  are  maintained 
by  some  persons  and  ignored  by  others — some  of  them 
being  accepted  in  one  social  circle,  others  in  another. 
And  unless  and  until  the  average  boy  or  man  has  risen 
to  the  higher  plane  of  conduct,  he  will  almost  inevitably 
accept  the  peculiarities  of  the  code  of  conduct  of  any 
circle,  so  long  as  he  acts  as  a  member  of  that  circle. 

The  boy's  discovery  of  the  diversities  of  the  codes  of 
different  members  and  circles  of  his  society  necessarily 
weakens  the  influence  upon  him  of  the  rules  in  regard 
to  which  such  diversities  obtain ;  he  is  led  by  them  to 
question  the  sanction  of  public  opinion  as  applied  to 
these  departments  of  conduct ;  and,  if  he  conforms  to  the 
diverse  codes  of  his  various  social  circles,  his  habits  of 
moral  conduct  will  not  become  so  firm  as  they  would  if 
he  were  acquainted  with  one  code  only.  These  diversi- 
ties of  opinion  in  our  complex  civilised  societies  weaken, 
then,  the  force  with  which  public  opinion  bears  upon  each 
individual's  conduct,  and  they  render  the  conduct  of  the 
mass  of  civilised  men  very  much  less  consistent  with 
the  standards  they  profess  than  is  that  of  most  savages 
and  barbarians.  This,  however,  does  not  imply  any  in- 
nate moral  inferiority  of  the  civilised  man ;  and,  though  it 
results  in  many  grave  social  evils  of  kinds  that  are  hardly 
known  in  well-organised  savage  societies,  it  brings  one 
great  advantage,  which  more  than  compensates  civilised 
societies  for  the  uncertainty  of  conduct  and  for  the  ap- 
pearance of  inferior  morality  on  the  part  of  the  mass  of 
their  members;  namely,  it  gives  scope  and  occasion  for 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     219 

the  development  of  higher  types  of  conduct  and  character 
than  can  be  found  in  primitive  communities,  and  hence 
it  renders  possible  the  progress  of  the  moral  tradition 
through  the  influence  of  these  higher  types. 

For  in  primitive  societies  the  precision  of  the  cus- 
tomary code  and  the  exact  coincidence  of  public  opinion 
with  the  code,  allow  of  no  occasion  for  deliberation  upon 
conduct,  no  scope  for  individual  moral  judgment  and 
choice ;  they  provide  no  sphere  of  action  for,  and  no  stim- 
ulus to  the  development  of,  strong  character,  such  as 
that  of  the  man  who  can  not  only  resist  the  promptings 
of  his  strongest  instinctive  impulses,  but  is  capable  also 
of  standing  up  against  public  opinion  and  of  doing  what 
he  judges  to  be  right  in  defiance  of  it. 

Let  the  reader  try  to  imagine  himiself  a  member  of 
a  society  whose  code  prescribes  that  he  shall  fall  flat 
on  his  face  whenever  he  meets  his  mother-in-law,  or  that 
he  shall  never  mention  certain  of  his  relatives  by  name; 
and  let  him  imagine  that  these  and  almost  all  other  de- 
tails of  conduct  are  prescribed  by  rules  the  breach  of 
which  is  visited  with  the  reprobation  of  the  whole  com- 
munity and  often  with  the  severest  punishments ;  he  will 
then  understand  how  little  scope  is  afforded  by  such  a 
rigid  code  for  the  development  of  character  and  will. 

The  exercise  of  moral  judgment  is  essential  to  the 
progress  of  individuals  tq^  the  higher  plane  of  conduct, 
and  at  this  point  we  must  briefly  consider  the  conditions 
of  such  judgment.  We  may  take  Dr.  Fowler's  statement 
of  the  relation  of  moral  judgment  to  emotion  as  repre- 
senting the  traditional  and  prevalent  doctrine.  He  wrote : 
"When  an  action  has  once  been  pronounced  to  be  right 
or  wrong,  morally  good  or  evil,  or  has  been  referred  to 
some  well-known  class  of  actions  whose  ethical  character 
is  already  determined,  the  emotion  of  approval  or  disap- 


220  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

proval  is  excited  and  follows  as  a  matter  of  course" ;  and 
again:  "No  sooner  is  the  intellectual  process  completed, 
and  the  action  duly  labelled  as  a  lie,  or  a  theft,  or  a 
fraud,  or  an  act  of  cruelty  or  ingratitude,  or  the  like, 
than  the  appropriate  ethical  emotion  is  at  once  excited."  ^ 
These  and  similar  passages  expound  the  traditional  doc- 
trine that  the  intellectual  process  of  classing,  of  rightly 
naming,  the  conduct  on  which  we  pass  moral  judgment  is 
the  primary  and  essential  step  in  exerting  moral  judg- 
ment, and  that  any  emotion  involved  in  the  process  is 
consequent  on  this  intellectual  process.  Others,  on  the 
other  hand,  totally  reject  this  doctrine  and  reverse  the 
order  of  the  process.  Professor  Westermarck,  for  ex- 
ample, maintains  that  m,oral  judgments  are  expressions 
of  moral  emotions ;  he  writes :  "That  the  moral  concepts 
are  ultimately  based  on  emotions  either  of  indignation  or 
approval,  is  a  fact  which  a  certain  school  of  thinkers 
have  in  vain  attempted  to  deny."  ^ 

Here  we  seem  to  have  two  flatly  ppp^sedjioctrines 
of  moral  judgment.  According  to  the  one,  judgment  jn 
every  case  produces  the  emotion ;  according  to  the  other, 
the  emotion^always  determines  the  Judgment.  We  must 
recognise  that  bqtFTfe^partially  true.  We  must  admit 
vv^ith  Westermarck  that  the  doHrmene  opposes  contains 
the  intellectualist  fallacy  (against  which  there  has  recent- 
ly been  so  widespread  a  reaction),  and  that  moral  judg- 
ments are  ultimately  based  on  the  emotions ;  but  then  we 
must  lay  stress  on  the  word  "ultimately."  For  the  emo- 
tions on  which  a  man's  moral  judgments  are  based  may 
be  not  his  own  emotions  at  the  time  of  passing  judgment, 
and  not  even  his  own  earlier  emotions,  but  the  emotions, 
especially  that  disinterested  emotion  we  call  moral  indig- 

^  "Progressive  Morality." 

""The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,"  p.  4- 


AD^'ANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     221 

nation,  of  those  who  in  bygone  ages  have  played  their 
parts  in  the  shaping  of  the  moral  tradition. 

No  man,  perhaps,  e^'er  has  learnt  to  make  moral  judg- 
ments without  previously  experiencing  some  emotions 
of  the  kind  from  which  the  moral  tradition  ultimately 
sprang ;  but  it  is  at  least  theoretically  possible  to  do  so. 
For  every  moral  tradition  embodies  a  great  number  of 
ready-made  judgments  formulated  in  words;  and  every 
well-organised  society  imposes  its  moral  tradition  upon 
each  of  its  members  with  tremendous  force.  The  child 
learns  to  accept  many  of  these  current  maxims  simply 
through  suggestion,  chiefly  of  the  kind  we  have  distin- 
guished as  prestige-suggestion ;  his  parents  and  teachers 
repeatedly  assert  various  moral  propositions — it  is  wrong 
to  tell  a  lie,  to  steal,  to  deceive,  to  be  cruel;  it  is  right 
to  be  honest,  kind,  or  generous ;  and  the  voice  of  society, 
with  its  irresistible  prestige,  re-enforces  these  assertions. 
The  child  accepts  these  and  many  other  similar  proposi- 
tions, and  will  apply  them  to  the  conduct  of  himself  and 
others,  before  he  can  understand  the  ground  of  them, 
and  before  actions  of  the  kind  to  which  they  are  ap- 
plicable have  evoked  in  him  any  emotion  that  could  deter- 
mine the  appropriate  moral  judgment.  For  example,  a 
child  will  accept  on  suggestion,  and  will  appropriately 
apply,  the  proposition  that  it  is  wrong  to  put  your  elbows 
on  the  table;  and,  if  he  has  acquired  in  some  degree  the 
sentiment  for  law  or  rule,  he  may  pass  the  judgment, 
"You  are  very  naughty  to  put  your  elbows  on  the  table," 
with  some  indignation,  just  as  he  might  reprove  another 
for  stealing  or  cruelty.  It  would  be  absurd  to  maintain 
that  his  condemnation  of  the  elbows  is  an  original  moral 
judgment  arising  out  of  moral  indignation.  We  must,  ini 
short,  distinguish  between  orj^inaL  moraLjiidgment^andj 
imitative  moral  judgments.     As  regards  the  latter,  the 


222  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

traditional  doctrine  is  true — the  act  of  classing  precedes 
and  determines  the  moral  emotion ;  as  regards  original 
moral  judgments,  Westermarck  is  in  the  right — they  pro- 
ceed directly  from  emotions. 

The  acceptance  by  the  normal  child  of  the  major  part 
of  the  current  maxims  is  inevitable,  if  they  are  authori- 
tatively asserted  to  him;  and  his  regard  for  them  and 
conformity  to  them  are  secured  by  that  process  of  de- 
velopment of  the  self -regarding  sentiment  by  the  agency 
of  rewards  and  punishments,  praise  and  blame,  which 
we  studied  in  the  foregoing  chapter.  As  regards  these 
imitative  judgments,  we  may  go  even  farther  than  Dr. 
Fowler  and  the  intellectualists,  and  may  say  that  they 
may  be  made,  not  only  without  antecedent  emotion,  but 
also  without  any  consequent  moral  emotion,  that  they 
may  be  purely  intellectual,  though  this  is  seldom  the  case. 
That  is  to  say,  we  accept  certain  maxims  of  conduct, 
either  purely  by  suggestion  or  in  part  also  in  virtue  of 
original  judgments  springing  from  our  emotions  and 
sentiments ;  thereafter  the  accepted  maxims  or  principles 
may  give  rise  to  moral  judgment  by  way  of  a  purely  intel- 
lectual process,^  the  recognition  of  the  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement of  conduct  with  those  principles,  a  process 
that  may  be  expressed  in  syllogistic  form — all  lies  are 
wrong ;  that  is  a  lie,  therefore  that  is  wrong.  And  action 
also  may  follow  in  virtue  of  another  previously  accepted 
principle;  e.g.,  I  ought  to  punish  your  wrong  conduct, 
therefore  I  punish  you.  Of  course,  such  purely  intel- 
lectual judgments,  unsupported  by  emotion  directly 
evoked  by  the  conduct  judged  of,  will  not  lead  to  efforts, 
on  behalf  of  the  right  and  against  the  wrong,  so  ener- 

*That  is,  a  process  as  purely  intellectual  as  any  mental  process 
can  be;  the  motive  power  of  the  process  is  not  the  impulse  of 
some  emotion  directly  evoked  by  the  action  judged. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     22^ 

getic  as  the  efforts  that  may  follow  upon  emotional  judg- 
ments. 

It  is  through  original  moral  judgments  of  approval 
and  disappi^ovaTthat  a  man  rises  to_thejhjgher  plane  of 
conduct ;  therefore  it  is  in  them  that  we  are  chiefly  inter- 
ested in  the  present  connection. 

Judgments  of  approval  and  disapproval  are  of  two 
great  classes,  the  aesthetic  and  the  moral,  which  .a^e  dif- 
ferentiated from  a  common  stock,  but  never  completely 
differentiated  by  most  men.  We  continue  to  Aise  the 
same  verbal  expressions  for  judgments  of  both  kinds; 
ought,  should,  must,  good,  bad,  wrong,  and  right  are 
terms  we  use  equally  in  moral  and  in  aesthetic  judgment. 
Such  judgments  are  commonly  said  to  spring  from  emo- 
tions of  approval  and  disapproval,  and,  though  there  is 
much  looseness  and  vagueness  in  current  accounts  of 
these  alleged  emotions,  they  are  described,  or  referred  to, 
by  many  authors  as  the  specifically  moral  emotions.  This 
is  only  one  more  illustration  of  the  chaotic  condition  in 
which  the  psychology  of  the  emotions  still  remains. 

We  have  already  seen  that  judgments  of  approval  and 
disapproval  may  be  purely  intellectual  processes,  deter- 
mined by  previously  accepted  principles,  and  that  such 
judgments  may  or  may  not  be  followed  by  appropriate 
emotions  having  as  their  objects  the  actions  on  which 
judgment  has  been  passed.  The  question  remains,  Are 
there  any  specific  emotions  from  which  original  moral 
judgments  spring  and  which  might  be  described  as  emo- 
tions of  approval  and  disapproval?  The  answer,  I  think, 
Tnust  be — Certainly  not,  there  is  no  specific  emotion  of 
approval  or  of  disapproval.  For  it  is  impossible  to  point 
to  any  such  emotions  distinct  from  those  we  have  already 
recognised,  and  either  form  of  judgment  may  spring  from 
any  one  of  several  of  those  primary  emotions  or  of  the 


224  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

complex  emotions.  Judgment  of  approval  may  be 
prompted  by  admiration,  gratitude,  positive  self-feeling, 
or  by  any  one  of  the  emotions  when  induced  by  way  of 
the  primitive  sympathetic  reaction ;  judgment  of  disap- 
proval springs  most  frequently  from  anger,  either  in  its 
primary  uncomplicated  form,^  or  as  an  element  in  one 
of  its  secondary  combinations,  such  as  shame,  reproach, 
scorn,  but  also  from  fear  and  disgust.  And  they  may, 
perhaps,  be  prompted  by  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain 
respectively  without  emotion,  though  judgments  having 
this  source  are  properly  aesthetic  rather  than  moral  judg- 
ments. In  the  young  child  these  original  moral  judg- 
ments spring  from  the  unorganised  emotions ;  but  in  the 
adult  they  are  more  commonly  prompted  by  emotions 
excited  within  some  sentiment  by  actions  affecting  the 
object  of  the  sentiment. 

/  It  is  notorious  that  the  sentiments  determine  our  moral 
judgments.  A  man's  concrete  sentiments  are  apt  to  lead 
him  to  judgments  that  are  valid  only  for  himself,  that 
have  little  objective  or  supra-individual  validity;  or,  as  is 

J  commonly  said,  they  pervert  his  judgment.  Thus  it  is 
notoriously  difficult  to  pass  moral  judgments  of  general 
or  objective  validity  upon  the  acts  of  those  we  love  or 
hate.  In  the  one  case  the  emotions  that  determine  ap- 
proval are  apt  to  play  too  great  a  part — for  the  prin- 
cipal emotions  of  the  sentiment  of  love  are  of  this  order ; 
in  the  other  case  those  which  determine  disapproval. 
The  abstract  sentiments,  on  the  other  hand,  such  senti- 
ments as  the  love  of  justice,  truth,  courage,  self-sacrifice, 
hatred    of    selfishness,    of    deception,    of    slothfulness — 

*  For  example,  some  young  children  pass  the  original  moral 
judgment  "You  are  naughty"  upon  any  person  who  interferes 
with  their  play  or  work,  who  obstructs  in  any  way  the  operation 
of  any  impulse  and  so  evokes  their  anger. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     225 

these  alone  enable  us  to  pass  moral  judgments  of  general 
validity.  These  sentiments  for  abstract  objects,  the  va- 
rious qualities  of  conduct  and  of  character,  are  the  spe- 
cifically moral  sentiments.  It  is,  then,  through  the  de- 
velopment of  such  abstract  sentiments  that  the  individ- 
ual's moral  development  and  the  refinement  of  his  moral 
judgment,  both  of  his  own  acts  and  those  of  others,  is 
eflFected,  and  that  his  moral  principles  are  formed.  And 
it  is  as  regards  this  development  of  the  abstract  moral 
sentiments  that  the  individual  is  most  open  to  the  influ- 
ence of  his  social  environment. 

No  man  could  acquire  by  means  of  his  own  unaided 
reflections  and  unguided  emotions  any  considerable  ar- 
ray of  moral  sentiments ;  still  less  could  he  acquire 
in  that  way  any  consistent  and  lofty  system  of 
them.  In  the  first  place,  the  intellectual  process  of  dis- 
criminating and  naming  the  abstract  qualities  of  char- 
acter and  conduct  is  quite  beyond  the  unaided  power  of 
the  individual ;  in  this  process  he  finds  indispensable  aid 
in  the  language  that  he  absorbs  from  his  fellows.  But  he 
is  helped  not  by  language  only ;  every  civilised  society 
has  a  more  or  less  highly  developed  moral  tradition,  con- 
sisting of  a  system  of  traditional  abstract  sentiments. 
This  moral  tradition  has  been  slowly  formed  and  im- 
proved by  the  influence  of  the  great  and  good  men,  the 
moral  leaders  of  the  race,  through  many  generations ; 
it  has  been  handed  on  from  generation  to  generation  in 
a  living  form  in  the  sentiments  of  the  elite,  the  superior 
individuals  of  each  generation,  and  has  been  embodied  in 
literature,  and,  in  partial  fashion,  in  a  variety  of  insti- 
tutions, such  as  the  Church.  And  every  great  and  organ- 
ised department  of  human  activity,  each  profession  and 
calling  of  a  civilised  society,  has  its  own  specialised  form 
of  the  moral  traditions,  which  in  some  respects  may  sink 


226  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

below,  in  other  respects  may  rise  above,  the  moral  level 
of  the  unspecialised  or  general  tradition. 

The  moral  tradition  of  any  society  lives,  in  its  fullest 
completest  form,  only  in  the  strong  moral  sentiments  of 
a  comparatively  few  individuals,  those  who  are  expres- 
sively called  "the  salt  of  the  earth."  The  great  majority 
of  men  participate  in  it  only  in  a  very  partial  manner 
and  in  very  diverse  degrees,  as  regards  both  the  strength 
of  their  moral  sentiments  and  the  nature  and  number  of 
such  sentiments  as  they  in  any  degree  acquire.  And  it 
is  only  by  the  absorption  of  the  moral  tradition  that  any 
man  can  acquire  a  respectable  array  of  moral  sentiments ; 
even  the  great  moral  reformer  begins  by  absorbing  the 
moral  tradition,  before  he  can  go  on  to  add  to  it,  or  to 
reform  it,  in  some  respect.  This^  is  the  truth  expressed 
by  T.  H.  Green  when  he  wrote  :^No  individual  can  make 
a  conscience  for  hirn^elf.  He  always  needs  a  society  to 
make  it  for  him."  ^J 

If  an  individual  is  to  acquire  abstract  moral  sentiments, 
he  must  not  grow  up  in  a  society  that  is  completely 
bound  by  the  laws  of  rigid  and  uniform  custom.  Rigid 
custom  is  the  cement  of  society  in  the  ages  preceding 
the  formation  of  a  moral  tradition,  and  the  breaking  of 
the  rigid  bonds  of  custom,  bonds  which  were  probably 
essential  for  the  preservation  of  primitive  societies,  was 
the  prime  condition  of  the  growth  of  the  moral  tradi- 
tion of  the  progressive  nations.  In  the  same  way,  it  is 
a  prime  condition  of  the  moral  progress  of  individuals ; 
the  individual  also  must  not  be  bound  in  absolute  obedi- 
ence to  any  system  of  rules  of  conduct  prescribed  by 
custom  or  in  any  other  manner.  For  in  either  case  he 
has  no  occasion  for  reflection  upon  conduct,  no  scope  for 
j  the  free  exercise  of  moral  judgment  and  choice,  no  op- 

*  "Prolegomena  to  Ethics,"  p.  351. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     227 

portunity  of  acquiring  by  absorption  the  traditional  sys- 
tem of  moral  sentiments. 

Suppose  that,  as  is  the  case  in  many  savage  societies, 
the  conduct  of  each  of  us  in  every  social  relation  were 
prescribed  by  a  rigid  custom ;  suppose,  as  was  suggested 
above,  that  you  must  never  speak  to,  or  look  at,  your 
mother-in-law ;  that,  if  you  meet  her  out  of  doors,  you 
must  fall  flat  on  your  face  until  she  has  passed  by ;  and 
that  infringement  of  this  customary  law  is  invariably 
punished  by  death  or  other  severe  penalty.  Suppose 
also  that  all  the  rest  of  your  social  behaviour  were 
defined  with  similar  precision  and  rigidity.  Or  imagine 
the  case  of  a  member  of  one  of  the  mediaeval  religious 
communities  whose  only  duty,  to  which  he  was  trained 
from  earliest  youth,  was  unquestioning  obedience  to  his 
superior.  It  is  easy  to  understand  that  under  such  con- 
ditions we  should  hardly  be  led  to  reflect  on  conduct, 
to  acquire  the  moral  sentiments,  or  to  make  moral  judg- 
ments of  any  kind ;  for  our  own  conduct,  we  should 
merely  have  to  ascertain  what  behaviour  custom  pre- 
scribes for  each  situation  and  to  observe  its  prescription ; 
and,  as  regards  the  conduct  of  other  men  also,  there 
would  be  no  scope  for  moral  judgment  but  only  for  the 
ascertainment  of  fact.  Did  he,  or  did  he  not,  neglect  this 
observance?  If  he  did,  he  must  be  punished;  if  not,  he 
is  to  go  free.  That  is  to  say,  under  such  a  system  there 
is  scope  only  for  the  merely  legal  attitude,  but  none  for 
that  of  moral  judgment. 

But  the  child  growing  up  in  the  midst  of  a  complex 
and  cultured  society,  coming  in  contact  with  various 
social  circles  in  which  diversities  of  code  and  opinion 
obtain,  and  reading  history  and  romance,  becomes 
acquainted  with  a  great  variety  of  opinions,  of  moral 
codes,  and  of  character  and  modes  of  conduct;  while 


228  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

language  leads  him  to  the  formation  of  a  certain  number 
of  abstract  conceptions  of  qualities  of  conduct  and  char- 
acter, however  vague  and  fluctuating.  If,  under  these 
conditions,  the  child  were  left  entirely  without  moral 
guidance,  he  would  acquire  some  abstract  moral  senti- 
ments, whose  nature  would  be  determined  by  the  strong- 
est emotional  dispositions  of  his  native  disposition  and 
by  the  chance  circumstances  of  his  life;  he  would  acquire 
some  sentiment  of  liking  for  all  those  qualities  and  types 
of  conduct  and  character  which  brought  him  the  most 
frequent  and  intense  satisfactions,  both  ideal  and  actual, 
and  some  sentiment  of  hate  or  dislike  for  those  which 
most  often  thwarted  his  efforts  and  brought  him  pain. 
That  is  to  say,  he  would  build  up  certain  abstract  senti- 
ments by  means  of  a  series  of  original  moral  judgments 
coming  from  his  emotions  and  his  concrete  sentiments. 
But  when  the  child  is  thus  brought  into  contact  with 
a  variety  of  characters,  codes  and  opinions,  he  normally 
comes  also  under  strong  influences  that  mould  his  grow- 
ing abstract  sentiments.  The  moral  sentiments  that  are 
most  fully  embodied  in  the  moral  tradition  of  his  time 
and  country  are  impressed  upon  him  on  all  hands  by 
precept  and  example — e.g.,  love  of  common  honesty  and 
of  courage,  dislike  of  meanness  and  of  cruelty ;  while 
of  other  moral  sentiments  belonging  to  the  more  refined 
part  of  the  moral  tradition,  he  finds  some  entertained  by 
some  persons,  others  by  other  persons.  Among  all  these 
persons  some  will  impress  their  abstract  sentiments  upon 
him  more  than  others ;  and,  in  the  main,  those  that  so 
impress  him  will  be  those  whose  power,  or  achieve- 
ments, or  position,  evoke  his  admiration.  Of  all  the  af- 
.fective  attitudes  of  one  man  towards  another,  admiration 
ifis  that  which  renders  him  most  susceptible  to  the  other's 
Influence;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why  this  should  be  so, 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE      229 

if  our  analysis  of  admiration   was  correct.     We  said  ^i 
that  admiration  is  compounded  of  wonder  and  negative'^ 
self-feeling.     The  impulse  of  wonder,  then,  keeps  his 
attention  directed  upon  the  admired  person ;  the  impulse 
of  negative  self-feeling  throws  him  into  the  submissive, 
receptive,  suggestible  attitude  towards  the  object  of  his 
admiration.     Hence  the  child  accepts  by  suggestion  thA; 
moral  jDropositions  of_the_persons  he  admires,  he  imitates! 
their  actions  and  sympathetically  shares  their  moral  emo- 
tions ;   and    so   his   developing   abstract    sentiments    are 
moulded  in  accordance  with  those  of  the  admired  per- 
sons.    If  these  persons  deliberately  aim  at  moulding  his 
sentiments,  the  extent  of  their  influence  in  this  direction 
is  only  limited  by  his  intellectual  capacity  for  forming 
abstract  conceptions  of  the  various  qualities  of  conduct 
and  character. 

The  child,  then,  builds  up  his  abstract  sentiments  by 
means  of  a  series  of  emotional  judgments,  judgments  of 
approval  and  disapproval,  which  are  original  in  the  sense 
that  they  spring  from  his  emotions  and  concrete  senti- 
ments; but  they  are  not  independently  formed  judg- 
ments, but  rather  emotional  judgments  made  under  the 
very  powerful  directing  influence  of  personal  suggestion 
and  sympathy.  In  modern  societies  this  influence  is 
exerted,  not  only  through  personal  contact,  but  on  a  very 
great  scale  by  literature ;  for,  in  so  far  as  we  learn  to 
grasp  in  some  degree  the  personality  of  an  author  and 
to  admire  him,  the  expressions  of  his  abstract  sentiments 
exert  this  personal  influence  upon  us,  more  especially,  of 
course,  upon  the  young  mind  whose  sentiments  are  not 
fully  formed  and  crystallised.  This,  of  course,  is  the 
principal  reason  that  literature  read  as  such,  as  the  ex- 
pressions of  great  personalities  that  evoke  our  admira- 

^See  p.   132. 


230  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

tion.  is  so  superior,  as  food  for  the  growing  mind,  to  the 
productions  of  the  daily  and  weekly  press ;  for,  no  matter 
how  well  written  these  may  be.  nor  how  admirable  the 
moral  sentiments  expressed  or  implied,  they  fail  to 
exert  the  great  influence  of  an  admired  personality.  Even 
if  the  autlior  of  acknowledged  eminence  is  not  intrin- 
sically superior  to  one  less  generally  recognised,  he  will 
exert  a  greater  moulding  intiuence  upon  the  abstract  sen- 
timents of  his  readers,  simply  because  their  knowledge 
that  so  many  others  admire,  and  have  admired,  this  au- 
thor, increases  by  mass-suggestion  and  synlpathy  their 
admiration  for  him  and  so  increases  also  their  receptivity 
towards  him  and  all  his  opinions  and  expressions. 

In  all  this  absorption  of  the  more  refined  parts  of  the 
moral  tradition,  the  native  disposition  of  the  individual 
will  make  itself  felt  more  or  less.  If  the  training  of 
the  moral  sentiments  is  most  carefully  and  skilfully  su- 
pervised from  the  first  years  of  Hfe,  the  native  dispo- 
sition W'ill  make  itself  felt,  not  so  much  in  the  nature 
of  the  abstract  objects  for  w'hich  sentiments  of  liking  and 
disliking  are  acquired,  but  rather  in  the  strength  of  the 
various  sentiments  and  the  force  of  the  emotions  awak- 
ened within  them.  But  if,  as  is  more  usually  the  case,  a 
certain  liberty  of  choice  is  allowed  to  the  young  mind, 
its  native  disposition  exerts  a  greater  selective  influence, 
and,  by  determining  the  choice  of  admired  models,  may 
lead  to  a  vastly  greater  development  of  some  of  the  moral 
sentiments  than  of  others.  And,  no  matter  how  strong 
the  moulding  influences  may  be,  they  must  fail  to  develop 
any  strong  sentiment  for  an  abstract  object,  if  that  senti- 
ment involves  or  implies  an  emotional  capacity  or  instinct 
that  is  natively  defective ;  if,  for  example,  a  man's  native 
disposition  comprises  only  a  weak  instinct  of  curiosity, 
he  will  hardly  acquire  a  strong  sentiment  for  the  life  of 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     231 

learning  and  research ;  if  it  is  defective  in  the  instinct 
of  self-assertion  and  its  emotion  of  positive  self- feeling, 
he  will  hardly  acquire  a  strong  sentiment  for  self-per- 
fection ;  if  it  is  defective  in  the  protective  instinct  and 
its  tender  emotion,  he  will  hardly  acquire  a  strong  senti- 
ment for  altruism  and  self-sacrifice. 

When  the  abstract  sentiments  have  been  acquired,  they 
determine  our  emotional  responses  to  the  conduct  and 
character  of  ourselves  and  others ;  the  intellectual  proc- 
ess of  classing  an  act  under  its  proper  heading,  the  ap- 
perception of  it  as  an  act  of  justice,  of  self-sacrifice,  or 
of  cruelty,  is  apt  to  call  out  at  once  the  appropriate  emo- 
tion in  some  degree,  and  secures  our  approval  or  disap- 
proval, in  accordance  with  the  nature  of  the  sentiment 
we  have  acquired  for  that  quality  or  class  of  action-  The 
objects  of  our  sentiments  of  love  and  hate  necessarily 
become  objects  of  desire  and  aversion.  Thus,  if  we 
have  acquired  the  sentiment  of  love  of  justice  and  we  are 
credibly  informed  that  any  person  is  in  serious  danger 
of  suflFering  injustice,  the  desire  of  justice,  arising  with- 
in the  abstract  sentiment,  impels  us  to  efforts  to  secure 
justice.^  The  strength  of  the  motive,  the  intensity  of  the 
desire  or  aversion  awakened  within  the  system  of  the 
sentiment,  depends  in  such  cases  upon  the  strength  of  the 
sentiment.  In  most  men  the  desires  and  aversions  arising 
from  the  abstract  sentiments  are  apt  to  be  much  inferior 
in  strength  to  those  excited  within  the  concrete  senti- 

*  The  effective  operation  of  this  sentircent  on  a  great  scale  has 
recently  been  illustrated  in  se^'eral  cases  in  which  the  most 
disinterested  efforts  of  private  individuak  have  corrected  the 
effects  of  miscarriages  of  legal  procedure — e.g.,  the  cases  of 
Mr.  Beck  and  Mr.  Edalji.  Sorre  years  ago  the  unjust  con- 
demnation of  Major  Dreyfus  produced  in  Frarxe  a  still  more 
striking  and  famous  disp'ay  of  disinterested  effort  on  behalf 
of  the  principle  of  justice. 


232  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ments ;  hence,  as  motives  of  these  two  classes  are  fre- 
quently opposed  in  tendency,  the  mere  possession  of 
moral  sentiments  does  not  always  suffice  to  determine  a 
man  to  action  in  accordance  with  them.  A  sentiment 
of  love  for  an  individual  may,  and  often  does,  give  rise 
to  a  desire  that  conflicts  with  the  desire  for  justice 
arising  from  the  sentiment  for  justice ;  and  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  with  its  strong  emotions  ,is  especially 
apt  to  conflict  with  the  moral  sentiments.  /  Hence  it  is 
possible  for  a  man  to  have  the  most  be&utiful  moral 
sentiments  and  yet  to  act  in  ways  that  are  not  altogether 
admirable. 

Even  the  purely  altruistic  sentiments,  the  love  of  be- 
neficence or  of  mankind  in  general,  will  not  necessarily 
suffice  to  enable  a  man  to  reach  the  highest  plane  of  con- 
duct— not  even  if  they  are  strong.  The  habJL-of  self- 
criticism  is  required,  and  this  implies,  and  arises  from, 
a""sT;r6ng  self-regarding  sentiment.  The  special  moral 
sentiments  must  be  brought  into  connection  with,  and 
organised  within,  the  system  of  a  more  comprehensive 
sentiment — what  may  be  called  the  master  sentiment 
among  all  the  moral  sentiments,  namely,  the  sentiment 
for  a  perfected  or  completely  moral  life.  If  a  man  ac- 
quires this  sentiment,  he  will  aim  at  the  realisation  of 
such  a  life  for  all  men  as  far  as  possible ;  but,  since  he 
has  more  control  over  his  own  Hfe  than  over  the  lives  of 
others,  he  will  naturally  aim  at  the  perfection  of  his  own 
life  in  the  first  place.  In  this  sentiment,  then,  the  altru- 
istic and  egoistic  emotions  and  sentiments  may  find  some 
sort  of  reconciliation ;  that  is  to  say,  they  may  become 
synthesised  in  the  larger  sentiment  of  love  for  an  ideal  of 
conduct,  the  realisation  of  which  involves  a  due  propor- 
tion of  self-regarding  and  of  altruistic  action;  and  the 
desire  for  the  realisation  of  this  ideal  may  become  the 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE     233 

master  motive  to  which  all  the  abstract  sentiments  lend 
whatever  force  they  have. 

It  is  worth  noting  in  passing  that  in  many  persons 
aesthetic  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  fine  character  andM 
conducrmay^Tay  a  large  parTnTthe  genesis  oFthe  ideal/ 
of  conduct  and  of  the  sentiment  of  love  for  this  ideal. 
Not  all  admiration  is  aesthetic  admiration,  but,  if  the 
object  that  we  admire  on  account  of  its  strength  or  ex- 
cellence of  any  kind,  presents  a  complex  of  harmoniously 
organised  and  centralised  relations  and  activities,  the 
mere  contemplation  of  it  pleases  us,  in  so  far  as  we  are 
capable  of  grasping  the  harmony  of  its  complex  features ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  affords  us  an  aesthetic  satisfaction,  and 
therefore  has  a  certain  value  for  us  and  becomes  an  ob- 
ject of  desire.  A  fine  character,  or  a  life  finely  lived,  has 
these  aesthetic  properties,  and  therefore  our  admiration 
of  it  will  be  an  aesthetic  admiration,  in  so  far  as  we  ap- 
preciate its  harmony  and  unity ;  we  are  then  disposed  to 
desire  all  the  more  strongly  that  our  own  character 
shall  be  of  this  nature,  shall  appear  to  the  world,  or 
all  that  part  of  it  whose  opinion  we  most  value,  as 
having  aesthetic  properties  that  lend  it  a  certain  dignity 
and  nobility;  our  self-regarding  sentiment  seeks  this  ad- 
ditional satisfaction,  we  desire  and  strive  to  realise  this 
aesthetic  ideal. 

The  desire  resulting  in  this  way  from  aesthetic  appre- 
ciation blends  in  very  various  proportions  with  the  purely 
moral  desire  for  the  realisation  of  the  ideal  of  conduct ; 
and  in  some  persons  of  the  type  of  Marius  the  Epicurean 
this  desire  may  be  the  principal  factor  in  the  regulation 
of  conduct. 


CHAPTER  IX 


VOLITION 


WE  have  now  sketched  the  way  in  which  an  individ- 
ual may  acquire  an  ideal  of  conduct  and  the  way 
in  which  his  primary  instinctive  dispositions,  becoming 
organised  within  the  complex  moral  sentiments,  may 
impel  him  to  strive  to  realise  such  an  ideal.  We  have 
seen  that  both  of  these  achievements,  the  acquisition  of 
the  ideal  and  of  the  sentiment  for  the  ideal,  are  rendered 
possible  only  by  the  absorption  of  the  more  refined  parts 
of  the  moral  tradition,  under  the  influence  of  some  of 
the  personalities  in  whom  it  is  most  strongly  embodied. 
These  persons,  we  said,  exert  this  influence  upon  us  in 
virtue  principally  of  the  admiration  that  they  evoke  in  us. 
This  admiration,  which  renders  us  receptive  to  their 
opinions  and  examples,  and  responsive  to  their  emotions, 
may  be,  of  course,  and  often  is,  blended  with  fear,  yield- 
ing the  tertiary  compound  emotion  which  we  call  awe; 
and  this  may  be  further  complicated  by  an  infusion  of 
tender  emotion,  which  renders  the  complex  emotion  one 
of  reverence ;  when  the  influence  of  the  persons  who  ex- 
cite these  complex  emotions  becomes  the  more  powerful 
in  proportion  to  the  additional  strength  of  the  complex 
impulses  evoked  by  them. 

It  was,  I  think,  in  the  main  because  the  older  moralists 
neglected  to  take  sufficiently  into  account  the  moral  tra- 
dition and  the  way  in  which  it  becomes  impressed  upon 
us,  and  because  they  treated  of  the  individual  in  artificial 

234 


VOLITION  235 

abstraction  from  the  social  relations  through  which  his 
moral  sentiments  are  formed,  that  they  were  led  to  main- 
tain the  hypothesis  of  some  special  faculty,  the  con- 
science, or  the  moral  sense  or  instinct,  or  the  moral  con- 
sciousness,^ in  seeking  to  account  for  moral  conduct. 

But,  though  we  may  have  accounted  for  the  desire  to 
realise  an  ideal  of  conduct,  we  have  still  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  in  some  men  this  motive  acquires  predom- 
inance over  all  others  and  actually  regulates  their  conduct 
in  almost  all  relations  and  situations.  For  some  men  ac- 
quire the  ideal  and  the  sentiment,  but  fail  wholly  or  in 
part  to  realise  the  ideal.  We  have  to  recognise  that  the 
desire  that  springs  from  the  completed  moral  sentiment 
is  usually  of  a  thin  and  feeble  sort  in  comparison  with 
the  fiercer  coarser  desires  that  spring  directly  from  our 
instincts  and  from  our  concrete  sentiments.  It  is  there- 
fore no  matter  for  surprise  that,  in  so  many  cases,  the 
acquirement  of  an  ideal  of  conduct  and  of  the  sentiment 

^  This  hypothesis  is  still  maintained  by  some  modern  writers 
of  repute.  Dr.  Rashdall  ("Theory  of  Good  and  Evil")  uses  the 
phrase  "the  moral  consciousness"  and  makes  it  the  key  of  his 
ethical  and  theological  position.  By  it  he  means  to  denote  the 
faculty  of  judging  of  ethical  value  or  of  judging  anything  to  be 
good.  He  regards  this  faculty  in  the  same  way  as  Kantians  re- 
gard our  faculties  of  perceiving  spatial  and  temporal  relations, 
namely,  as  one  which,  though  it  may  be  developed  and  refined 
by  use,  is  given  a  priori  as  a  primary  faculty  of  intuition,  one 
not  evolved  from  more  elementary  forms  of  judgment.  But  he 
makes  no  attempt  to  justify  this  assumption,  on  which  he  hangs 
so  great  a  weight  of  consequences.  Curiously  enough,  while  the 
Kantian  view  of  our  faculties  of  spatial  and  temporal  judgment 
is  held  to  imply  that  such  judgments  have  no  objective  value, 
space  and  time  being  purely  subjective,  Dr.  Rashdall  finds  in  the 
assured  a  priori  character  of  moral  judgment  and  the  moral 
consciousness  his  one  source  of  confidence  in  the  objectivity  of 
such  judgments. 


236  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

for  it  does  not  suffice  to  secure  its  realisation.     How, 

then,  are  we  to  account  for  the  fact  that  the  conduct  of 

/the  good  man  is  in  the  main  regulated  according  to  the 

I  promptings   of   these   weaker   desires,   and    against   the 

<  stronger,  more  urgent  prompting  of  the  more  primitive 

desires?    It  is  this  appearance  of  the  overcoming  of  the 

stronger  by  the  weaker  impulse  or  motive,  in  so  many 

cases  of  right  action  following  upon  a  conflict  of  motives 

and  the  exercise  of  moral  effort,  that  leads  Professor 

I  James  to  define  moral  action  as  "action  in  the  line  of 

the  greatest  resistance."^ 

It  is  in  these  cases  of  moral  conflict  that  volition  or 
effort  of  the  will  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  comes 
in  to  determine  the  victory  to  the  side  of  the  weaker  im- 
pulse. Professor  James  puts  the  matter  schematically  in 
'this  way: — 

I  (ideal  impulse)  in  itself  weaker  than  P  (the  native 
propensity). 

I  +  E  (effort  of  will)  stronger  than  P. 

Professor  James,  like  many  others,  finds  here  an  ulti- 
mate and  irresolvable  problem  in  face  of  which  we  can 
only  say — The  will  exerts  itself  on  the  side  of  the  weaker 
motive  and  enables  it  to  triumph  over  its  stronger  antag- 
onists, while  leaving  the  word  "will"  simply  as  the  name 
for  this  possibility  of  an  influx  of  energy  that  works  on 
the  side  of  the  weaker  motive,  an  influx  of  energy  of 
whose  source,  causes,  or  antecedents  we  can  say  nothing. 
That  is  to  say,  Professor  James,  failing  to  carry  the  an- 
alysis of  volition  beyond  the  point  of  determining  what 
the  effects  of  volition  are,  adopts  the  doctrine  of  indeter- 
minism.  I  do  not  propose  to  go  at  length  into  the  world- 
old  dispute  between  libertarians  and  determinists.  But 
the  acceptance  of  the  libertarian  doctrine  would  be  in- 
*  "Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  549. 


VOLITION  ^zy 

compatible  with  any  hope  that  a  science  of  society,  in 
any  proper  sense  of  the  word  "science,"  may  be  achieved; 
for  in  face  of  each  of  the  most  important  problems  of 
such  a  science,  we  should  have  to  content  ourselves  with 
the  admission  of  impotence.^ 

Some  attempt  must  therefore  be  made  to  show  that 
the  effort  of  volition  is  not  the  mysterious  and  utterly  in- 
comprehensible process  the  libertarians  would  have  it  to 
be;  but  that  it  is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  same  prin- 
ciples as  other  modes  of  human  activity ;  that  it  involves 
no  new  principles  of  activity  and  energy,  but  only  a  more 
subtle  and  complex  interplay  of  those  impulses  which 
actuate  all  animal  behaviour  and  in  which  the  ultimate 
mystery  of  mind  and  life  resides. 

The  dispute  has  been  conducted  upon  two  different 
grounds,  the  moral  and  the  psychological.  On  the  former 
ground  it  has  been  urged,  again  and  again,  that  if  we  do 
not  recognise  freedom  of  the  will,  do  not  recognise  some 
degree  of  independence  of  antecedent  conditions  in  the 
making  of  moral  choice,  we  cannot  recognise  any  moral 
responsibility,  and  that,  therefore,  to  deny  the  freedom 

^  This  we  may  see  most  clearly  in  the  case  of  the  problem  of 
the  evolution  of  the  moral  tradition.  If,  as  we  have  said,  the 
moral  tradition  has  been  slowly  evolved  by  the  influence  of  the 
precept  and  example  of  the  great  moral  leaders,  and  if,  as  the 
libertarians  maintain,  all  the  moral  victories  of  such  leaders,  in 
virtue  of  which  they  attain  their  ascendancy  over  their  fellow- 
men  and  their  power  of  moulding  the  moral  tradition,  have  this 
mysterious  and  utterly  incomprehensible  source,  then  the  growth 
of  the  moral  tradition  may  be  described  but  cannot  be  explained, 
and  we  have  no — or  but  very  little — ground  to  suppose  that  what 
we  can  learn  of  its  growth  in  the  past  will  justify  any  assump- 
tions or  forecasts  as  to  its  growth  in  the  future.  And  this  must 
remain  true  no  matter  how  small  be  the  quantity  of  "will-energy" 
postulated  by  the  libertarians  to  account  for  the  turning  of  the 
scale  in  the  conflict  of  motives. 


238  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

of  the  will  is  to  undermine  all  morality  and  to  deprive 
our  systems  of  rewards  and  punishments,  of  praise  and 
blame,  of  all  logical  justification.  This  argument  implies 
a  false  conception  of  responsibility  and  of  the  proper 
nature  and  purpose  of  rewards  and  punishments,  al- 
though it  has  been  urged  by  many  persons  who  might 
have  been  expected  to  avoid  this  confusion  of  popularj-* 
thought.  ^ 

Responsibility  means  accountability — to  be  responsible 
for  a  wrong  action  means  to  be  rightly  liable  to  punish- 
ment. If  to  punish  means  simply  to  inflict  pain  from 
the  motive  of  resentment  or  revenge,  then  it  may  fairly 
be  said  that  it  is  illogical  for  the  determinist  to  hold 
any  one  liable  to  punishment,  i.e.,  responsible,  that  he 
ought  rather  to  say:  "Poor  fellow,  you  could  not  help 
it;  therefore  I,  recognising  that  you  are  merely  a  piece 
of  mechanism,  will  not  vent  my  resentment  upon  you, 
you  are  not  responsible."  But  the  infliction  of  pain 
from  the  motive  of  revenge  or  resentment  is  entirely 
a-moral  or  immoral.  Punishment  is  only  justifiable,  is 
only  moral  punishment,  when  inflicted  as  a  deterrent 
from  further  wrong-doing,  and  as  an  influence  capable 
of  moulding  character.  That  is  to  say,  men  are  only 
morally  responsible,  or  rightly  liable  to  punishment,  if 
the  punishment  may  fairly  be  expected  to  deter  them 
from  further  wrong-doing,  or  to  modify  their  natures  for 
the  better.^  It  is  for  this  reason  that,  while  we  rightly 
punish  children  and  animals,  we  do  not  punish  madmen. 
These  last  are  not  rightly  liable  to  punishment,  they  are 
not  held  responsible,  because  it  has  been  found  that 
/punishment  will  not  exert  on  them  its  normal  deterrent 

^  I  purposely  avoid  touching  upon  the  more  difficult  moral 
problem,  How  far  is  punishment  of  one  man  justified  by  its 
deterrent  or  reforming  effects  upon  others. 


VOLITION  239 

and  improving  effects.^  The  attitude  of  the  judge,  or 
father,  who  has  to  punish,  is  then :  *T  punish  you  in 
order  that  you  may  be  deterred  from  repetition  of  your 
bad  conduct.  I  know  that  you  could  not  help  it,  but, 
if  you  are  not  punished,  you  will,  on  the  next  occasion 
of  temptation,  still  be  unable  to  avoid  misconduct ;  where- 
as, if  I  now  punish  you,  you  will  in  all  probability  be 
deterred ;  and  the  punishment  may  initiate  or  strengthen 
in  you  the  habit  of  control  of  your  impulses,  and,  by  in- 
ducing in  you  a  greater  regard  for  authority,  it  may  set 
the  growth  of  your  self-regarding  sentiment  upon  the 
right  lines."  In  other  words,  according  to  the  deter- 
minist  view,  if  a  man  is  morally  punishable,  i.e.,  re- 
sponsible, it  is  because  his  wrong  action  was  the  outcome 
of  his  own  nature,  was  determined  by  conditions  of  which 
the  most  important  lie  in  his  mental  constitution,  and  be- 
cause it  may  reasonably  be  hoped  that  punishment  may 
modify  his  nature  for  the  better. 

If  the  opposed  view  is  true,  if  a  man's  voluntary  ac- 
tions are  not  in  the  main  determined  by  conditions  com- 
prised within  the  system  of  his  mental  constitution,  the 
only  ground  for  punishing  him  must  be  the  emotion  of 
resentment  or  revenge.  For,  if  the  issues  of  our  moral 
conflicts  are  decided,  not  by  the  conditions  of  our  own 
natures,  but  by  some  new  beginning,  some  causal  factor 
having  no  antecedents,  or  by  some  mysterious  influence 
coming  upon  us  from  an  unknown  source,  a  prompting 

^  In  so  far  as  punishment  will  produce  these  effects  upon  mad-  \ 
men  they  have  a  moral  right  to  be  punished.  The  medical  pro- 
fession generally  ignores  this  truth  in  its  perennial  conflict  with 
the  lawyers.  It  is  for  them  to  determine  which  of  the  mental 
diseases  render  the  patient's  conduct  incapable  of  being  con- 
trolled by  punishment  or  by  the  threat  of  it,  and  which  leave 
him  still  susceptible  to  the  deterrent  and  reforming  influence 
of  punishment. 


240  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

from  God  or  devil — or  from  any  other  source  the  liber- 
tarian likes  to  assign  it  outside  our  own  natures — then 
clearly  we  deserve  neither  praise  nor  blame,  neither  re- 
ward nor  punishment;  and  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to 
modify  the  issue  of  such  conflicts  by  modifying  our 
natures  by  means  of  these  influences.^  That  is  to  say, 
if  the  libertarian  doctrine  is  true,  there  can  be  no  moral 
punishment  of  a  wrongdoer,  but  only  vengeful  harming 
of  him,  and  therefore  there  can  be  no  moral  respon- 
sibility. The  argument  from  moral  responsibihty  is 
therefore  altogether  on  the  side  of  the  determinist.  It 
is  the  advocate  of  freewill  who  would  undermine  moral 
responsibility. 

But  there  is  another  argument  for  freewill  based  on 
moral  needs,  which  is  not  to  be  set  aside  so  easily.  If, 
as  the  determinist  asserts,  each  of  my  actions  is  com- 
pletely determined  by  antecedent  conditions  and  proc- 
esses that  are  partly  within  my  own  nature,  partly  in 
my  environment,  why  should  I  make  any  moral  effort? 
My  conduct  will  be  what  it  will  be,  the  issue  of  condi- 
tions that  existed  and  determined  it  in  every  detail 
long  before  I  was  born ;  therefore  it  would  be  foolish  of 
me  to  take  pains  to  choose  the  better  course  and  to 
make  efforts  to  realise  it.  This  is  the  real  crux  of 
this    dispute.     This    is   the    legitimate    inference   from 

*  The  only  possible  answer  of  the  libertarians  to  this  argument 
seems  to  be :  Yes,  but  if  this  outside  influence  is  "a  very  little 
one,"  we  may,  by  means  of  punishment,  give  the  good  influences 
a  better  chance  of  determining  a  favourable  issue  of  our  moral 
conflicts.  This  seems  to  be  the  line  recent  defenders  of  freewill 
are  inclined  to  take.  They  are,  nevertheless,  bound  to  admit 
that,  since  the  magnitude  of  these  outside  influences  is  unknown, 
the  recognition  of  them  must  weaken  the  case  for  punishment, 
and  must  diminish  to  an  unknown  and  quite  incalculable  extent 
our  moral  responsibility. 


VOLITION  241 

determinism.  This  is  its  moral  difficulty,  which  has 
seldom  been  squarely  faced  by  its  advocates,  and  never 
overcome  by  them.  To  say,  as  so  many  of  them  say, 
that  we  are  free  to  act  in  accordance  with  our  own 
natures,  that  the  conditions  of  our  actions  are  within 
us,  and  that  this  is  all  the  freedom  that  any  reasonable 
man  can  desire — to  say  this  does  not  remove,  or  in  any 
degree  lessen,  this  moral  difficulty.  Such  reflections 
may,  no  doubt,  be  satisfactory  enough  to  those  who 
believe  that  their  own  natures  are  above  serious  reproach, 
but  not  to  those  who  can  point  to  undesirable  ancestry 
and  unmistakable  flaws  in  their  native  dispositions. 
Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  give  any  helpful  answer 
to  one  who  adopts  this  line  of  justification  for  moral 
slackness ;  we  can  only  hold  him  responsible  and  punish 
him.  One  may  suspect  that  the  determinists,  most  of 
whom  try  to  put  aside  this  difficulty  by  some  scornful 
reference  to  Oriental  fatalism,  are  in  general  really  afraid 
of  it,  and  have  entered  into  a  conspiracy  resolutely  to 
ignore,  since  they  cannot  dispel,  this  dark  shadow  on 
human  life. 

But  psychology  must  not  allow  its  investigations  and 
theories  to  be  biased  by  moral  needs ;  and  it  must  not 
easily  accept,  as  evidence  in  favour  of  freewill,  the  diffi- 
culty of  finding  in  our  mental  constitution  the  source  of 
that  influx  of  energy  which  seems  to  play  the  decisive 
role  in  volition.^ 

*  The  most  successful  defence  of  indeterminism  yet  made  is 
that  of  Dr.  Schiller  ("Studies  in  Humanism").  His  position  is 
not  quite  the  same  as  Professor  James's.  He  suggests  that  there 
may  arise  conjunctions  of  conditions  whose  issue  is  indetermi- 
nate in  the  sense  that  opposing  forces  are  exactly  balanced  in  an 
unstable  equilibrium,  which  we  might  compare  to  that  of  a  bil- 
liard ball  balanced  on  a  knife-edge.  A  strictly  minimal  force 
might  then  determine  the  issue  in  either  direction,  and  so  pro- 


242  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

The  psychological  problem  we  have  to  face  is,  then, 
this :  Can  we  give  any  psychological  account  of  the  con- 
ditions of  the  effort  of  will,  which,  being  thrown  on 
the  side  of  the  weaker,  more  ideal  motive,  may  cause  it 
to  prevail  over  the  coarser,  more  primitive,  and  stronger 
motive? 

We  have  recognised  that  all  impulses,  all  desires  and 

duce  very  important  consequences;  e.g.,  if  the  knife-edge  were 
on  the  water-parting  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  ball  might 
reach  the  Atlantic  or  the  Pacific  Ocean,  according  to  the  direc- 
tion of  this  minimal  force.  Dr.  Schiller  points  out  truly  enough 
that,  for  anj'thing  we  know,  such  situations  may  occur  in  both 
the  physical  and  moral  spheres ;  for,  if  their  issue  is  thus  deter- 
mined by  some  such  minimal  force  that  is  not  determined  by 
antecedent  conditions,  the  calculation  of  the  strength  of  the 
opposing  forces,  with  sufficient  accuracy  to  enable  us  to  dis- 
cover the  presence  of  this  unconditioned  factor,  is  beyond  our 
power,  and  we  shall  probably  never  be  able  to  make  this  calcu- 
lation for  the  physical,  and  certainly  never  for  the  moral,  world. 
If  this  unconditioned  factor  is  assumed  to  be  in  every  case  of 
strictly  minimal  strength,  the  admission  of  its  reality  will  not 
seriously  undermine  the  principles  of  moral  responsibility;  but 
it  will,  as  pointed  out  above,  introduce  an  incalculable  element 
among  the  factors  which  the  student  of  society  has  to  try  to  take 
into  account^  and  therefore  will  make  difficult  if  not  impossible 
the  attempt  to  construct  a  science  of  history  and  of  society.  Wheth- 
er it  would  lighten  in  any  degree  the  moral  difficulty  of  determin- 
ism discussed  above  is  a  more  difficult  and  subtle  problem;  I 
cannot  at  present  see  that  it  can  have  any  such  result,  save  in  the 
following  way :  it  would  allow  us  to  believe  in  "a  power,  not 
ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteousness,"  and  such  a  belief  might 
encourage  and  stimulate  us  to  make  efforts  towards  the  realisa- 
tion of  the  purpose  of  that  power.  Since,  then,  a  decision  of  this 
question  cannot  be  attained  on  empirical  grounds,  it  remains 
open  to  us  to  postulate  indeterminism ;  and  if  such  postulation 
makes  for  the  predominance  of  right  conduct,  it  is  difficult  to 
find  any  good  reason  for  refusing  to  follow  James  and  Schiller 
when  they  ask  us  to  commit  ourselves  to  it. 


VOLITION  243 

aversions,  all  motives — in  short,  all  conations — fall  into 
two  classes :  ( i )  those  that  arise  from  the  excitement 
of  some  innate  disposition  or  instinct;  (2)  those  that 
arise  on  the  excitement  of  dispositions  acquired  during 
the  life  of  the  individual  by  differentiation  from  the 
innate  dispositions,  under  the  guidance  of  pleasure  and 
of  pain.  We  may,  then,  restate  our  problem  in  more 
general  terms,  as  follov^^s:  Is  volition  only  a  specially 
complex  case  of  conation,  implying  some  conjunction  of 
conations  of  these  two  origins  rendered  possible  by  the 
systematic  organisation  of  the  innate  and  acquired  dis- 
positions? Or  does  it  involve  some  motive  power,  some 
source  of  energy,  some  power  of  striving,  of  an  alto- 
gether different  order?  Clearly  we  must  attempt  to  ac- 
count for  it  in  terms  of  the  former  alternative,  and  we 
may  only  adopt  the  latter  if  the  attempt  gives  no  promise 
of  success.  It  may  fairly  be  claimed,  I  think,  that  we 
can  vaguely  understand  the  way  in  which  all  volition 
may  be  accounted  for  as  a  special  case  of  conation,  dif- 
fering from  other  conations,  not  in  kind,  but  only  in 
complexity.  We  may  see  this  most  clearly  if  we  form 
a  scale  of  conations  ranging  from  the  simplest  type  to 
the  most  complex  and  obscure  type,  namely,  moral  choice 
achieved  by  an  effort  which,  in  the  struggle  of  higher 
and  lower  motives,  brings  victory  to  the  side  of  the 
higher  but  weaker  motive.  If  types  of  conation  can  be 
arranged  in  such  a  scale,  each  type  differing  from  its 
neighbours  only  very  slightly,  that  will  afford  a  strong 
presumption  of  continuity  of  the  scale;  for  if  volition 
involves  some  peculiar  factor,  not  operative  in  other 
conations,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  draw  a  sharp  line  be- 
tween the  volitional  and  the  non-volitional  conations. 
That  such  a  scale  can  be  made  is,  I  think,  indisputable; 


244  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  an  attempt  to  illustrate  it  will  be  made  on  a  later 
page. 

But,  though  we  cannot  draw  any  sharp  line  between 
volitions  and  conations  of  other  types,  it  is  convenient 
and  justifiable  to  reserve  the  name  "volition,"  or  act 
of  will,  for  a  particular  class  of  conations,  and  we  must 
first  try  to  determine  what  are  the  marks  of  the  cona- 
tions of  this  class. 

Some  authors  do  not  recognise  this  distinction,  but 
describe  all  conations,  every  form  of  mental  activity,  as 
issuing  from  the  will.  For  Schopenhauer,  for  example, 
the  blind  appetitions  displayed  by  lowly  organisms  were 
acts  of  will,  equally  with  our  greatest  moral  efforts ;  for 
Professor  Bain  there  was  no  such  distinction,  because 
he  regarded  all  activities  as  alike  prompted  simply  by 
pleasure  or  pain,  as  efforts  to  secure  pleasure  or  to  escape 
from  pain.  And  it  was  for  many  years  a  common  prac- 
tice to  class  all  bodily  movements  as  either  unconscious 
reflex  actions  or  voluntary  actions.  But  of  late  years  in- 
crease of  insight  into  the  simpler  modes  of  action  and 
the  better  comprehension  of  the  large  part  they  play  in 
our  lives,  have  led  to  the  general  recognition  of  the  pro- 
priety of  the  distinction  of  volitional  and  non-volitional 
conations.  Herbert  Spencer  and  others,  confining  their 
attention  to  the  conations  expressed  in  bodily  move- 
ments, have  regarded  as  volitional  all  movements  that 
are  immediately  preceded  by  the  idea  of  the  movement.^ 
But  this  precedence  of  the  idea  of  movement  is  merely 
the  mark  of  ideo-motor  action,  and  many  such  move- 
ments take  place  in  an  automatic  or  machine-like  fashion 
that  is  very  different  from  unmistakable  volition. 

*This  view  seems  to  be  maintained  still  by  Professor  PToffding 
in  a  recent  article  in  the  Revue  Philosophique  (1907),  "Sur  la 
Nature  de  la  Volontd." 


VOLITION  -245 

Others  adopt  as  the  criterion  of  voHtional  action  its 
antecedence  by  the  idea  or  representation  of  the  end 
to  be  achieved  by  it.  But  this  is  common  to  all  action 
prompted  by  desire,  to  all  conation  that  is  not  mere  blind 
appetition.  And  a  man  may  struggle  against  the  prompt- 
ing of  a  desire  whose  end  is  clearly  represented.  We 
commonly  and  properly  say  in  such  cases  that  the  man's 
will,  or  the  man  himself,  struggles  against  the  desire  and 
masters  it,  or  is  mastered  by  it.  Clearly,  then,  volition  is 
something  other,  and  more,  than  simple  desire,  and  more 
than  desire  issuing  in  action.  Nor  can  we  be  content  to 
regard  as  volitional  every  action  issuing  from  a  conflict 
of  desires ;  for  such  conflicts  take  place  on  a  plane  of 
mental  development  lower  than  that  at  which  volition 
proper  becomes  possible. 

Professor  Stout,^  criticising  Mr.  Shand's  conclusion 
that  a  volition  is  a  unique  differentiation  of  conation,  a 
special  form  of  conation  that  is  incapable  of  being  an- 
alysed or  described,^  puts  the  problem  in  this  way: 
"How  does  a  volition  differ  from  a  desire?"  And  the 
answer  he  proposes  is  that  a  "volition  is  a  desire  quali- 
fied and  defined  by  the  judgment  that,  so  far  as  in  us 
lies,  we  shall  bring  about  the  attainment  of  the  desired 
end."  That  volition  involves  such  a  judgment  is  true, 
I  think,  of  the  special  class  of  volitions  we  call  reso- 
lutions, but  not  of  all  volitions ;  and,  even  if  it  were  true 
of  all,  it  certainly  would  not  adequately  describe  the 
difference  between  desire  and  volition.  We  have  seen 
that  in  the  typical  case  of  volition,  that  of  hard  moral 
choice,  the  effort  of  will  somehow  supports  or  re-en- 
forces the  weaker  motive,  and  enables  it  to  get  the  better 
of  the  stronger  motive.    Now,  a  mere  judgment  has  no 

*  "Mind,"  New  Series,  vol.  v. 
■  Ibid.,  vol.  iv. 


246  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

such  motive  power ;  rather,  the  judgment,  "I  shall  do  this 
and  not  that"  is  merely  the  mode  in  which  the  accom- 
plished volition  is  explicitly  expressed  when  the  circum- 
stances demanding  the  one,  or  the  other,  mode  of  action 
lie  still  in  the  future;  the  judgment  is  an  effect  of,  rather 
than  the  essence  of,  the  volitional  process. 

The  essential  mark  of  volition — that  which  distin- 
guishes it  from  simple  desire,  or  simple  conflict  of  de- 
sires— i.  that  the  personality  as  a  whole,  or  the  central 
feature  or  nucleus  of  the  personality,  the  man  hin  .elf, 
or  all  ihat  which  is  regarded  by  himself  and  others  as 
the  most  essential  part  of  himself,  is  thrown  upon  the 
side  of  the  weaker  motive ;  whereas  a  mere  desire  may 
be  felt  to  be  something  that,  in  comparison  with  this 
most  intimate  nucleus  of  the  personality,  is  foreign  to 
the  self,  a  force  that  we  do  not  acknowledge  as  our  own, 
and  which  we,  or  the  intimate  self,  may  look  upon  with 
horror  and  detestation. 

Before  following  up  this  clue  and  attempting  to  trace 
the  source  of  this  energy  with  which  the  idea  of  the  self 
seems  to  support  one  of  the  conflicting  motives,  we 
must  ask,  What  is  the  immediate  effect  of  voHtion?  Ac- 
cording to  a  widely  accepted  view  we  can  only  will 
a  movement  of  some  part  of  the  body.  This  view  is 
explicitly  maintained  by  Bain,  and  has  received  the  en- 
dorsement of  Professor  Stout.  Yet  it  is,  I  think,  quite 
indefensible.  We  may,  and  often  do,  effectively  will 
the  continuance  of  a  sensation  or  an  idea  in  conscious- 
ness ;  by  an  effort  of  will  one  can  maintain  at  the  focus  of 
consciousness  a  presentation  or  idea,  which,  but  for  the 
volition,  would  be  driven  out  of  the  focus  by  other  ideas 
or  sense-impressions.  Those  who  accept  the  view  that 
we  can  will  only  a  movement,  or  a  motor  adjustment  of 
some  kind,  usually  try  to  explain  away  these  cases  of 


VOLITION  247 

volunt-ary  direction  of  attention  to  sense-impressions  or 
objects  of  any  kind,  by  saying  that  in  these  cases  the 
immediate  effect  of  volition  is  merely  some  appropriate 
muscular  adjustment  of  a  sense-organ,  which  adjust- 
ment aids  indirectly  in  maintaining  the  idea  c^  sense- 
impression  at  the  focus  of  consciousness.  Thus  Pr.  Stout 
writes :  "The  volition  to  attend  is  strictly  anafi  gous  to 
the  volition  to  move  the  arm,  or  perform  ary  other 
bod^'ly  action.  It  follows  from  this  that  our  Voluntary 
cort'm'and  of  attention  must  depend  on  our  voluntary 
comrnand  of  the  motor  processes  of  fixation."'^  But, 
though  the  statement  of  the  former  of  these  two  sen- 
tences is  unimpeachable,  the  conclusion  drawn  in  the  sec- 
ond has  no  logical  connection  with  it.  It  would  seem  that 
this  doctrine  owes  its  prevalence  to  the  fact  that  the 
sequence  of  movement  upon  volition  to  move  is  an  im- 
mediately observable  and  undeniable  fact,  one  so  familiar 
that  we  are  apt  to  overlook  the  inexplicable  and  myste- 
rious nature  of  the  sequence,  and  to  accept  it  as  a  matter 
of  course;  just  as  most  of  us  accept  as  a  matter  of 
course  the  equally  mysterious,  inexpHcable,  and  familiar 
sequence  of  sensation  upon  stimulation  of  a  sense- 
organ. 

There  are  two  sufficient  grounds  for  rejecting  this 
doctrine.  First,  desire  notoriously  tends  to  maintain  the 
idea  of  its  object  or  end  at  the  focus  of  consciousness; 
our  thought  keeps  flying  back  to  dwell  on  that  which  we 
strongly  desire,  in  spite  of  our  best  efforts  to  banish  the 
idea  of  it  from  our  minds. 

This  power  of  desire  to  maintain  the  desired  object 
at  the  focus  of  consciousness,  to  keep  our  attention  di- 
rected to  such  an  object,  is,  like  the  persistent  bodily 
striving  that  characterises  all  conation  and  marks  of  such 
*  "Analytic  Psychology,"  vol.  i.,  p.  243. 


248  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

action  most  clearly  from  mechanical  process,  the  imme- 
diate expression  of  psychical  work,  and  involves,  as  was 
said  above,  the  central  mystery  of  life  and  mind  and  of 
their  relation  to  matter.  No  one  contends  that  desire 
maintains  the  presentation  of  its  end  indirectly  only  by 
way  of  motor  adjustments;  such  maintenance  is  rather 
an  essential  and  immediate  effect  of  every  impulse  that 
rises  above  the  level  of  blind  appetition  and  becomes 
conscious  of  its  end.  Why,  then,  should  we  deny  to  voli- 
tion, which  is  desire  and  more  than  desire,  a  power  that 
desire  unmistakably  possesses?  Secondly,  that  volitional 
effort  can  directly  maintain  a  presentation  at  the  focus 
of  consciousness  may  easily  be  shown  by  appropriate  ex- 
periment.^ 

We  must,  then,  reverse  the  position ;  instead  of  saying 
that  volitional  direction  of  attention  is  an  indirect  effect 
of  volitional  innervation  of  some  muscular  apparatus, 
we  must  recognise  that  volitional  innervation  of  muscles 
is  but  a  special  case  of  volition,  and  that  the  essential  and 
immediate  effect  of  all  volition  is  the  maintenance  of  a 
presentation  at  the  focus  of  consciousness.  For,  when 
we  will  a  movement,  we  do  but  re-enforce  the  idea  of 
that  movement  so  that  it  tends  more  strongly  to  issue 
in  movement.  We  may  therefore  follow  Professor  James 
when  he  asserts  that  "the  essential  achievement  of  the 
will  is  to  attend  to  a  difficult  object  and  hold  it  fast  before 
the  mind,"  and,  again,  that  "effort  of  attention  is  thus  the 
essential  phenomenon  of  will."     In  the  special  case  in 

*  Experiments  that  seem  to  establish  this  point  were  described 
by  the  author  in  the  fourth  of  the  series  of  papers  entitled 
"Physiological  Factors  of  the  Attention-Process,"  "Mind,"  N.S., 
vol.  XV.  Some  of  these  experiments  have  since  been  repeated 
and  confirmed  by  MM.  Et.  Maigre  and  H.  Pieron  (Revue  de 
Psychiatrie  et  de  Psychologie  Experimental,  Avril,  1907). 


VOLITION  249 

which  the  object  to  which  we  direct  our  attention  by  a 
volitional  effort  is  a  bodily  movement,  the  movement  fol- 
lows immediately  upon  the  idea  in  virtue  of  that  myste- 
rious connection  between  them  of  which  we  know  almost 
nothing  beyond  the  fact  that  it  obtains. 

Effort  of  attention  is,  then,  the  essential  form  of  all  I 
volition.  And  this  formulation  of  the  volitional  process, 
the  holding  of  an  idea  at  the  focus  of  consciousness  by 
an  effort  of  attention,  covers  every  instance  of  volition. 
Let  us  consider  a  few  of  the  principal  types  of  volitional 
effect.  In  deliberation  we  have  the  ideas  of  two  dif- 
ferent lines  of  action  rising  alternately  to  the  focus  of 
consciousness,  either  one  being  checked  or  inhibited  by 
the  other  before  it  can  determine  action;  in  the  act  of 
volitional  choice  we  give  permanence  and  dominance  to 
the  one  idea,  and  in  so  doing  we  exclude  the  other  more 
or  less  completely  from  consciousness.  Again,  in  making 
a  resolution  to  follow  a  certain  line  of  conduct,  we  form 
as  clear  an  idea  as  possible  of  that  line  of  conduct,  and 
we  hold  the  idea  steadily  before  the  mind  by  an  effort 
of  attention.  It  is  true  that  we  may  formulate  our  reso- 
lution in  the  form  of  a  judgment — I  am  going  to  do  this ; 
but  that  is  something  additional,  not  an  essential  part  of 
the  volitional  process.  Once  more,  in  volitional  recol- 
lection of  some  fact  we  have  forgotten,  e.g.,  the  name  of 
a  man  of  whom  we  are  thinking,  our  volition  merely 
holds  the  idea  of  this  man  before  consciousness,  so  that 
it  has  the  opportunity  to  develop  its  various  aspects,  its 
associative  setting,  the  place  and  time  and  company  in 
which  we  have  seen  the  man;  all  of  which,  of  course, 
increases  the  chance  that  his  name  will  be  reproduced 
or  recollected. 

We  have  now  to  go  on  to  the  more  serious  part  of 
the  problem  of  volition,  and  to  ask,  Can  we  give  any 


250  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

account  of  the  process  that  results  in  this  holding  of 
a  presentation  at  the  focus  of  consciousness  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  rival  presentations?  The  thorough-going  lib- 
ertarian should  reply:  "No,  this  act  of  will,  this  holding 
of  the  attention,  is  not  conditioned  by  the  mind  or  char- 
acter, it  has  no  antecedents  in  the  mental  processes  of  the 
subject  who  is  said  to  will,  therefore  we  may  not  hope 
to  give  any  psychological  account  of  its  antecedents  or 
conditions,  if  it  has  any."  Professor  James  does  not  go 
quite  so  far  as  this ;  having  correctly  defined  the  essential 
effect  of  volition,  he  claims  to  be  able  to  trace  one  step 
backwards  the  process  of  which  it  is  the  issue.  He  tells 
us  that  the  holding  fast  of  the  one  idea  at  the  focus  of 
consciousness  is  effected  by  suppressing  or  inhibiting  all 
rival  ideas  that  tend  to  exclude  it;  the  favoured  idea 
then  persists  in  virtue  of  its  own  energy  and  works  its 
appropriate  effects,  whether  in  the  production  of  bodily 
movement  or  in  the  determination  of  the  further  course 
of  mental  process. 

Professor  Wundt  teaches  a  very  similar  doctrine.  For 
him  volition  is  one  aspect  of  apperception,  and  appercep- 
tion is  essentially  the  inhibition  of  all  presentations  save 
the  one  that  rises  to  the  focus  of  consciousness.  Ac- 
cording to  these  two  great  authorities,  then,  volition  is 
essentially  a  negative  function,  an  inhibiting  of  irrelevant 
presentations.  But  neither  of  them  explains  how  the  in- 
hibition is  effected,  whence  comes  the  inhibiting  force, 
or  what  are  the  conditions  of  its  operation.  Presum- 
ably, according  to  Professor  James,  this  is  where  every 
attempt  to  trace  the  volitional  process  from  its  effects 
backwards  comes  against  a  dead  wall  of  mystery,  be- 
cause the  inhibiting  stroke  issues  from  some  region  in- 
accessible to  our  intellects,  or  simply  happens  without 
antecedents. 


VOLITION  251 

But  this  doctrine  of  the  primarily  inhibitive  character 
of  the  volitional  process  is,  I  think,  a  false  scent;  and 
it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  we  can  successfully  trace 
back  the  process,  if  we  make  this  false  start.  What 
gives  it  a  certain  plausibility  is  the  fact  that  volitional 
attention,  like  all  attention,  involves  inhibition  of  all 
presentations  other  than  the  one  held  at  the  focus  of 
consciousness ;  but  this  inhibition  is  a  secondary  or  col- 
lateral result  of  the  essential  process,  which  is  primarily 
a  re-enforcement  of  the  one  idea,  the  idea  of  the  end 
that  we  will.  Throughout  the  nervous  system,  with  the 
exception  possibly  of  those  most  primitive  parts  directly 
concerned  in  the  control  of  the  visceral  organs,  inhibi- 
tion always  has  this  character,  appears  always  as  the 
negative  aspect,  or  complementary  result,  of  a  positive 
process  of  innervation.  There  is  no  good  evidence  of 
inhibiting  impulses  sent  out  to  the  muscles  of  the  vol- 
untary system ;  and  we  control  involuntary  tendencies 
either  by  innervating  antagonistic  muscles,  or  by  directing 
our  attention  elsewhere  by  an  effort  of  will;  that  is  to 
say,  by  concentrating  the  energy  of  the  mind  and  nervous 
system  in  one  direction  we  withdraw  it  from,  or  prevent 
its  flowing  in,  any  other  direction.  We  may  see  this  most 
clearly  when  we  attempt  to  exert  volitional  control  over 
the  deep-seated  sensation-reflexes,  such  as  the  tendency 
to  sneeze  or  the  tendency  to  flinch  under  a  sudden  pain 
or  threat.  Most  of  us  learn  to  suppress  a  sneeze  by 
volitionally  accentuating  the  energy  of  the  respiratory 
movements — we  make  regular,  rapid  and  forced  inspira- 
tions and  expirations ;  and  in  order  to  avoid  flinching 
or  winking  we  strongly  innervate  some  group  of  muscles, 
perhaps  almost  the  whole  muscular  system,  but  most  ha- 
bitually and  most  strongly  the  muscles  of  the  jaw,  brow, 


252  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  hands.  And  all  the  other  instances  of  inhibitions 
that  play  so  large  a  part  in  our  mental  and  nervous  life 
appear  to  be  of  this  type,  the  supplementary  or  negative 
aspects  of  positive  excitations.^  We  must  not,  then, 
reverse  the  order,  as  Wundt  and  James  do,  in  the  case 
of  volition  and  make  inhibition  the  primary  and  essen- 
tial aspect  of  the  process.  We  must  conclude  that  voli- 
tion essentially  involves  a  positive  increase  of  the  energy 
with  which  an  idea  maintains  itself  in  consciousness  and 
plays  its  part  in  determining  bodily  and  mental  processes. 

So  we  come  back  from  our  brief  discussion  of  the 
views  of  other  writers  to  the  position  that  in  the  typical 
case  of  volition,  when  in  the  conflict  of  two  motives  the 
will  is  thrown  on  the  side  of  one  of  them  and  we  make 
a  voHtional  decision,  we  in  some  way  add  to  the  energy 
with  which  the  idea  of  the  one  desired  end  maintains 
itself  in  opposition  to  its  rival. 

This  conclusion  constitutes  an  important  step  towards 
the  answer  to  the  question  with  which  we  set  out — Is 
volition  merely  a  specially  complex  conjunction  of  the 
conative  tendencies  of  the  two  kinds  that  we  have  rec- 
ognised from  the  outset?  For  it  shows  us  that  the 
[essential  operation  of  volition  is  the  same  as  that  of 
desire,  namely,  the  holding  the  idea  of  the  end  at  the 
focus  of  consciousness  so  that  it  works  strongly  towards 
the  realisation  of  its  end,  prevaiHng  over  rival  ideas  and 
■tendencies. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  follow  up  the  clue  that 

*  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  question  and  a  theory  of  the 
inhibitory  process  see  a  paper  by  the  author,  "The  Nature  of 
Inhibitory  Processes  within  the  Nervous  System"  in  "Brain," 
vol.  xxvi.,  and  his  review  of  Professor  Sherrington's  "Integrative 
Action  of  the  Nervous  System"  in  "Brain,"  vol.  xxx 


VOLITION  253 

we  left  on  one  side  some  little  way  back.  We  recog- 
nised that  in  the  typical  case  of  volition  a  man's  self, 
in  some  peculiarly  intimate  sense  of  the  word  "self,"  is 
thrown  upon  the  side  of  the  motive  that  is  made  to 
prevail. 

That  the  empirical  self,  the  idea  of  his  self  that  each 
man  entertains,  plays  an  essential  part  in  volition  has 
been  widely  recognised.  The  recognition  seems  to  be 
implied  by  the  obscure  dictum,  approved  by  Mr.  Bradley 
and  several  other  writers,  that  in  volition  we  identify 
the  self  with  the  end  of  the  action.  It  was  expressed 
by  Dr.  Stout  when  he  wrote  that  the  judgment,  "I  am 
going  to  do  this,"  is  the  essential  feature  of  volition  by 
which  it  is  distinguished  from  desire;  and  it  is  more 
clearly  expressed  in  his  latest  volume,^  where  he  writes, 
"What  is  distinctive  of  voluntary  decision  is  the  inter- 
vention of  self-consciousness  as  a  co-operating  factor." 
But  he  does  not,  I  think,  make  quite  clear  how  self- 
consciousness  plays  this  role.^ 

No  mere  idea  has  a  motive  power  that  can  for  a 
moment  withstand  the  force  of  strong  desire,  except  only 
the  pathologically  fixed  ideas  of  action,  and  the  quasi- 
pathological  ideas  of  action  introduced  to  the  mind  by 

*  "The  Groundwork  of  Psychology." 

'  Some  authors  wax  scornful  when  they  examine  the  state- 
ment that  the  self  is  the  all-important  factor  in  volition.  But  the 
view  they  scornfully  reject  is  that  which  makes  the  abstract  egn, 
the  logical  subject  of  all  our  experiences,  or  the  transcendental 
self,  the  source  of  the  power  of  the  will.  If  self  is  meant  to  be 
taken  in  either  of  these  two  senses  in  this  connection,  the  scorn 
of  these  writers  is  perhaps  justifiable  when  they  stigmatise  it 
as  a  m.ere  metaphysical  abstraction.  It  is  for  this  reason  better 
to  say  always  the  idea  of  self  (rather  than  simply  the  self) 
is  an  essential  factor  in  volition. 


254  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

hypnotic  suggestion.^  And  the  idea  of  the  self  is  no 
exception  to  this  rule.  The  idea  of  the  self,  or  self-con- 
sciousness, is  able  to  play  its  great  role  in  volition  only 
in  virtue  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  the  system  of 
emotional  and  conative  dispositions  that  is  organised 
about  the  idea  of  the  self  and  is  always  brought  into  play 
to  some  extent  w^hen  the  idea  of  the  self  rises  to  the  focus 
of  consciousness.  The  conations,  the  desires  and  aver- 
I  sions,  arising  within  this  self-regarding  sentiment  are  the 
I  motive  forces  zvhich,  adding  themsehes  to  the  weaker 
ideal  motive  in  the  case  of  moral  effort,  enable  it  to  win 
the  mastery  over  some  stronger,  coarser  desire  of  our 
primitive  animal  nature  and  to  banish  from  consciousness 
the  idea  of  the  end  of  this  desire. 

In  the  absence  of  a  strong  self-regarding  sentiment, 
the  idea  of  the  self,  no  matter  how  rich  and  how  accurate 
its  content,  can  play  but  a  feeble  part  in  the  regulation 
of  conduct,  and  can  exert  little  or  no  influence  in  moral 
choice.  We  may  see  this  clearly  if  we  imagine  the  case 
of  a  man  who  combines  full  and  accurate  self-knowledge 
with  almost  complete  lack  of  self-respect  and  pride.  The 
case  is  hardly  realised,  because,  as  we  have  seen,  ad- 
vance in  self-knowledge  depends  upon  the  existence  of 
the  self-regarding  sentiment.  But  it  is  approximately 
realised  by  men  who,  having  attained  self-knowledge,  af- 
terwards, through  a  series  of  moral  misfortunes,  lose 
their  self-respect  more  or  less  completely.  In  such  a 
man  accurate  self-knowledge  would  simply  enable  him 

*  Ideas  of  this  latter  kind  have  not  the  irresistible  force  often 
attributed  to  them.  Dr.  Bramwcll  has  argued  very  strongly  that 
if  they  are  opposed  to  the  organised  tendencies  of  the  subject 
they  will  in  no  case  realise  themselves  in  action  ("Hypnotism, 
its  History,  Theory,  and  Practice").  In  my  opinion  his  view 
is  in  the  main  correct,  though,  no  doubt,  he  has  a  little  over- 
driven it. 


VOLITION  255 

to  foresee  more  accurately  than  others  what  things  would 
bring  him  the  greatest  satisfactions  and  pains,  and  to 
foretell  his  own  conduct  under  given  conditions.  He 
might  become  a  very  paragon  of  prudence,  but  hardly 
of  virtue.  Such  a  man  might  have  acquired  and  might 
retain  admirable  moral  sentiments ;  he  might  even  have 
formed  an  ideal  of  conduct  and  character,  and  might  en- 
tertain for  this  ideal  a  sentiment  that  led  him  to  desire 
its  realisation  both  for  himself  and  others.  But,  if  he 
had  lost  his  self-respect,  if  his  self-regarding  sentiment 
had  decayed,  his  conduct  might  be  that  of  a  villain  in  spite 
of  his  accurate  self-knowledge  and  his  moral  sentiments. 
On  each  occasion  on  which  a  desire,  springing  from  a 
moral  sentiment,  came  into  conflict  with  one  of  the 
coarser  and  stronger  desires,  it  would  be  worsted ;  for 
there  would  be  no  support  for  it  forthcoming  from  the 
sentiment  of  self-respect.  Something  like  this  is,  I  take 
it,  the  condition  of  the  man  who  becomes  an  habitual 
drunkard  after  acquiring  admirable  moral  sentiments. 
He  may  still  desire  the  realisation  of  all  that  is  good 
and  moral,  and  may  have  a  lofty  ideal  of  conduct;  but, 
if  he  has  become  known  to  all  the  world  as  a  sot  and 
has  become  aware  of  the  fact,  he  can  no  longer  find  in 
his  self-regarding  sentiment  a  support  for  his  better, 
more  ideal,  motives.  Whereas,  so  long  as  his  drinking 
is  secret  and  is  preceded  on  each  occasion  by  a  struggle 
in  which  his  self-respect  takes  part  with  his  moral  sen- 
timents against  the  desire  for  drink,  there  is  still  room 
for  hope  that  he  may  reform  his  habits. 

We  may,  then,  define  volition  as  the  supporting  or  \ 
re-enforcing  of  a  desire  or  conation  by  the  co-operation  \ 
of  an  impulse  excited  imthin  the  system  of  the  self-re-  { 
garding  sentiment. 

Since,  as  we  have  seen,  the  growth  of  the  self-regard- 


256  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ing  sentiment  is  a  gradual  process,  there  can  be  no  sharp 
line  drawn  between  complex  conations  that  are  volitional 
and  those  that  are  not.  Between,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
simple  desire  conscious  of  its  end  but  not  complicated  by 
self-consciousness,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  moral  ef- 
fort that  gives  the  victory  to  the  ideal  motive — which 
is  volition  in  the  fullest  sense — there  is  a  large  range 
of  complex  conations  in  which  the  self-regarding  emo- 
tions and  conations  play  parts  of  all  degrees  of  impor- 
tance and  refinement.  It  is  instructive  and  important  for 
our  purpose  to  devise  cases  illustrating  the  principal 
stages  in  the  transition  from  simple  conflict  of  impulses 
to  volition  in  the  fullest  sense. 

Let  us  take,  as  illustrating  the  stages  in  this  scale : — 

1.  The  case  of  a  child  who  desires  food  that  is  in 
a  dark  room  and  who  is  impelled  in  opposite  directions 
by  this  desire  and  by  his  fear  of  the  dark  place.  If  either 
impulse  overcomes  the  other  and  action  follows,  that  is 
not  a  case  of  volition. 

2.  Suppose  that  the  child  has  been  punished  on  some 
previous  occasion  because  his  fear  has  overcome  him, 
and  suppose  that  the  memory  of  this  punishment  and 
his  aversion  to  it  enabled  his  desire  for  food  to  overcome 
his  fear.  Is  that  a  case  of  volition?  In  the  simplest 
conceivable  case  of  behaviour  of  this  sort,  such  as 
might  be  exhibited  by  a  young  child  or  a  dog,  I  should 
say  no. 

3.  But,  if  the  child  has  attained  some  degree  of  self- 
consciousness  and  says,  "I  don't  want  to  be  punished,  so 
I  will  go  and  get  it,"  we  might  perhaps  call  this  volition 
of  the  lowest  grade. 

4.  As  illustrations  of  stages  successively  higher  in  the 
scale,  suppose  the  child  to  say,  "I  must  go  and  get  it,  for 
mother  will  scold  me  if  I  don't" ;  or  again — 


VOLITION  257 

5.  "I  will  do  it  because,  if  I  don't,  the  other  boys  will 
call  me  a  coward." 

6.  Or  let  him  say,  "I  will  do  it,  for  one  ought  to  be 
able  to  put  aside  this  absurd  fear,  and  I  should  be 
ashamed  if  any  one  knew  that  I  was  afraid  of  going 
in  there." 

In  all  these  cases,  except  the  first,  the  influence  of  the 
social  environment  is  clearly  the  factor  that  leads  to  the 
mastery  of  the  one  impulse  by  the  other.  And  the  last 
two  cases,  which  clearly  imply  the  existence  of  the  senti- 
ment of  self-respect  and  the  co-operation  of  an  impulse 
awakened  within  it  would  generally  be  admitted  to  be 
cases  of  volition. 

7.  But  now  consider  a  case  in  which,  although  social 
disapproval  is  ranged  on  the  side  of  the  restraining  im- 
pulse, the  effort  of  will,  being  thrown  on  the  side  of  the 
motive  for  action,  enables  it  to  overcome  the  restrain- 
ing impulse.  Suppose  that  our  imaginary  agent  is  a  man 
of  great  attainments  whose  life  and  work  are  publicly 
fecognised  as  of  great  value  to  the  community ;  and  sup- 
pose that  he  suddenly  finds  himself  before  a  burning 
house  in  v/hich  a  child  remains  in  imminent  danger.  To 
save  the  child  seems  impossible,  and,  though  the  man's 
protective  impulse  strongly  prompts  him  to  make  the  at- 
tempt, he  is  restrained  by  a  very  real  fear.  We  may  sup- 
pose that  the  impulse  of  fear  is  more  than  strong  enough 
to  overcome  the  rival  impulse,  if  these  two  were  left  to 
fight  it  out  alone ;  and  we  may  suppose  that  the  influence 
of  his  friends  and  of  society  in  general  is  throv/n  upon 
the  side  of  his  fear — his  companion  tells  him  that  it 
would  be  wicked  to  sacrifice  his  valuable  life  in  this  hope- 
less attempt,  and  he  knows  that  this  will  be  the  general 
opinion  of  his  fellows  and  that  he  will  be  regarded  by 
many  as  a  vainglorious   fool.     Nevertheless,  our  hero 


258  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

feels  that  to  make  the  attempt  is  the  higher  line  of  con- 
duct, he  deliberates  a  few  moments  and  then,  choosing 
to  act,  throws  himself  into  the  forlorn  hope  with  all  his 
energy.  Here  is  a  case  of  undeniable  volition,  of  hard 
choice,  and  of  action  in  the  line  of  greatest  resistance. 
The  appeal  of  social  approval  and  disapproval  to  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  seems  to  be  all  against  the  decision 
actually  taken,  yet  the  will  seems  to  triumph  over  that 
as  well  as  over  the  restraining  impulse  of  fear. 

Is  it,  then,  impossible  to  bring  this  case  under  our 
definition  of  volition  ?  Must  we  fall  back  on  indeter- 
minism  and  say :  Here  was  an  action  that  was  performed 
by  sheer  volition  against  all  the  motives  arising  from  the 
man's  mental  constitution ;  all  the  factors  of  which  we 
can  give  any  psychological  account  were  against  action, 
yet  the  will  triumphed  over  them?  I  do  not  think  we 
need  draw  this  conclusion ;  for  the  principles  of  explana- 
tion we  have  hitherto  relied  upon  will  not  fail  us  alto- 
gether in  this  case. 

We  may  imagine  two  rather  different  ways  in  whicK 
such  volition  can  be  accounted  for. 

I.  The  man  may  be  moved  to  his  decision  by  the  be- 
lief that  his  conduct  would  be  approved  by  persons 
whose  approval  he  values  more  highly,  whose  approval 
appeals  more  strongly  to  his  self-regarding  sentiment, 
than  the  approval  of  all  his  friends  and  contemporaries. 
He  may  think  of  such  men  as  Chinese  Gordon  and  others. 
for  whom  he  may  have  a  profound  admiration  or 
reverence;  or  he  may  believe  in  a  purely  ideal  person- 
ality ;  and,  though  he  may  believe  that  these  persons  will 
never  know  of  his  action,  yet  his  assurance  that,  if  they 
knew,  they  would  approve,  awakens  a  motive  within 
his  self-regarding  sentiment  that  overrides  all  others  and 
determines  his  hard  choice;  just  as  on  a  lower  plane,  in 


VOLITION  259 

the  type  of  volition  illustrated  by  our  sixth  case,  one  says, 
"I  will  overcome  this  fear,  for  what  would  my  com- 
panions say  if  they  knew  I  was  afraid." 

2.  On  the  other  hand,  our  hero  may  decide  from 
principle.  He  may  long  ago  have  decided  after  reflection 
that  courageous  self-sacrifice  for  the  good  of  others  is  a 
principle  superior  to  all  other  considerations.  Whether 
his  opinion  is  right  may  be  for  others  a  fair  matter  of 
dispute,  but  not  for  him ;  he  has  made  up  his  mind  after 
mature  and  cool  deliberation ;  and  now  a  case  arises  call- 
ing for  the  application  of  his  principle,  and  he  acts  in 
accordance  with  it  and  against  what  might  seem  over- 
whelmingly strong  motives.  Such  action  is  the  type  of 
resolution,  of  resolute  adherence  to  decisions  once 
formed ;  and  it  is  the  highest  type  of  resolute  action,  be- 
cause in  this  case  the  decision  was  not  formed  in  face  of 
the  special  circumstances  calling  for  its  application,  but 
was  of  a  general  nature. 

How,  then,  does  the  possession  of  this  principle  supply 
the  motive  power  that  overcomes  the  other  strong  mo- 
tives? The  bare  verbal  formula,  "I  will  always  prefer 
self-sacrifice  to  self-seeking,"  has  no  motive  power,  or  but 
a  minimum.  In  the  first  place,  this  preference  for  self- 
sacrifice  is  a  moral  sentiment  acquired  in  the  main  by 
selective  absorption  from  the  higher  moral  tradition  in 
the  way  we  noticed  in  the  preceding  chapter;  and  this 
moral  sentiment  has  been  incorporated  in  the  sentiment 
for  the  ideal  of  conduct  that  our  hero  has  set  up  for  him- 
self. His  self-regarding  sentiment  demands  that  he  shall 
live  up  to  this  ideal;  he  feels  shame  when  he  does  not, 
elation  and  satisfaction  when  he  does ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
impulse  of  self-assertion  organised  within  his  sentiment 
of  self-respect  gives  rise  to  a  strong  desire  to  realise  his 
ideal  under  all  circumstances. 


26o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

But,  in  order  that  his  adopted  principle  may  power- 
fully affect  his  conduct,  something  more  is  needed.  He 
must  have  a  strong  sentiment  for  self-control.  Of  all  the 
abstract  moral  sentiments,  this  is  the  master  sentiment 
for  volition  and  especially  for  resolution.  It  is  a  special 
development  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment.  For  the 
man  in  whom  this  sentiment  has  become  strong  the  de- 
sire of  realising  his  ideal  of  self-control  is  a  master-mo- 
tive that  enables  him  to  apply  his  adopted  principles  of 
action,  the  results  of  his  deliberate  decisions,  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  all  other  motives.  The  operation  of 
this  sentim.ent,  more  than  anything  else,  gives  a  man 
the  appearance  of  independence  of  the  appeal  of  the 
voice  of  society,  and  of  all  other  persons,  to  his  self-re- 
garding sentiment.  It  enables  him  to  substitute  himself, 
as  it  were,  for  his  social  environment. 

These  two  interpretations  of  this  particular  case  seem 
to  me  to  illustrate  the  two  principal  types  of  higher  voli- 
tion natural  to  men  of  different  dispositions.  The  former 
jcase,  in  which  the  determining  motive  is  the  desire  of  the 
/^approval  of  the  ideal  spectator,  illustrates,  perhaps,  the 
Wre  usual  source  of  the  moral  volition  of  the  man  in 
\Vhom  active  sympathy  is  strongly  developed.  In  princi- 
ple it  presents  no  difficulty,  if  we  have  sufficiently  ac- 
counted for  the  influence  of  approval  and  disapproval  in 
general.  It  implies  merely  a  greater  refinement  of  dis- 
crimination between  those  whose  approval  we  value  or 
are  indifferent  to  than  is  exercised  by  the  average  man. 

The  other  type  is  characteristic  of  the  less  social,  less 
I  sympathetic,  man.  In  this  case  it  is  less  easy  to  trace 
'the  energy  of  volition  back  to  the  self- regarding  senti- 
ment. For  we  found  that  this  sentiment  has  for  its  ob- 
ject, not  the  self  merely,  but  the  self  in  its  relations  to 
others,  the  emotional  and  conative  dispositions  of  the 


VOLITION  261 

sentiment  being  excited  by  the  regards  and  attitudes  of 
others  towards  the  self.  And  it  is  now  suggested  that 
a  man  may  achieve  a  hard  moral  choice  in  opposition  to 
social  approval  or  disapproval  by  substituting  himself, 
more  or  less  completely,  for  his  fellow-men  as  the  spec- 
tator whose  regards  evoke  the  impulses  of  his  self-re- 
garding sentiment  and  in  whose  approval  they  find  their 
satisfaction.  It  is  doubtful  whether  this  substitution  is 
ever  completely  achieved ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  idea 
of  the  self,  the  consciousness  of  self,  is  in  its  very  origin 
and  essential  nature  a  consciousness  of  the  self  in  its 
social  relations ;  and  probably  some  vague  social  reference 
ahvays  persists.  But,  in  any  case,  it  is  clear,  I  think,  that 
this  kind  of  volition,  which  seems  almost  to  render  a 
man  independent  of  his  social  environment,  can  only  be 
attained  to  by  the  development  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  under  social  influences.  Most  of  us  make 
some  progress  towards  this  substitution.  At  first  our 
self-regarding  sentiment  is  sensitive  to  the  regards  of 
every  one  and  of  all  social  circles;  and  then,  as  we  find 
that  different  persons  and  circles  regard  the  same  con- 
duct and  our  same  self  very  differently,  we  learn  to  set 
these  off  against  one  another  more  or  less,  we  learn  to 
despise  the  opinions  and  regards  of  the  mass  of  men  and 
to  gain  confidence  in  our  own  personal  and  moral  judg- 
ments ;  thus  our  own  estimate  of  ourselves,  which  in  early 
life  is  apt  to  fluctuate  with  every  passing  regard  of  our 
fellows,  becomes  stable  and  relatively  independent. 

Most  of  us,  perhaps,  may  be  said  to  achieve  a  stage 
in  this  process  at  which  our  self-regarding  sentiment 
and  emotions  have  for  their  object  the  self  in  relation  to 
the  select  group  of  persons  who  are  of  similar  ways  of 
thinking  with  ourselves,  those  who  share  our  moral  senti- 
ments and  from  whom  we  have  in  the  main  absorbed 


262  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

them ;  and,  \Vhen  we  make  a  moral  effort,  it  is  with  some 
more  or  less  vague  reference  to  this  select  circle.  All 
this  applies  to  the  self,  not  only  in  its  strictly  moral 
aspects,  but  in  all  others  also;  and  one  of  the  great  ad- 
vantages of  being  fully  grown  up  is  that  we  cease  to  suf- 
fer so  acutely  and  so  frequently  the  elations  and  the 
humiliations  which  in  early  life  we  are  so  liable  to  ex- 
perience in  face  of  every  attitude  of  approval  or  dis- 
approval, whether  expressed  or  merely  implied. 

There  are  two  doctrines  from  which  we  must  care- 
fully distinguish  this  of  the  self-approbative  impulse : 

1.  There  is  Adam  Smith's  fiction  of  the  well-informed 
and  impartial  spectator,  the  man  within  the  breast,  whose 
approval  we  seek ;  this  may  be  regarded  as  a  first  approxi- 
mation to  the  truth. 

2.  There  is  the  hedonistic  doctrine,  which  we  rejected 
in  an  earlier  chapter,  to  the  effect  that  in  making  a  moral 
effort  we  are  always  seeking  the  pleasure  of  self-satis- 
faction or  seeking  to  avoid  the  pain  of  remorse.  The 
kind  of  volition  we  are  considering  may,  and,  I  think, 
usually  does,  involve  no  anticipation  of  these  pleasures 
and  pains.  The  pleasure  or  pain  may  result,  but  the  de- 
sire of,  or  aversion  from,  it  is  not  necessarily  or  com- 
monly an  important  part  of  the  motive ;  what  we  desire, 
or  are  averse  from,  is  not  the  pleasure  of  approval  or  the 
pain  of  disapproval,  but  the  approval  or  disapproval 
themselves ;  and,  whether  the  approval  is  our  own  or  an- 
other's, the  source  of  the  additional  motive  power,  which 
in  the  moral  effort  of  volition  is  thrown  upon  the  side  of 
the  weaker,  more  ideal  impulse,  is  ultimately  to  be  found 
in  that  instinct  of  self-display  or  self-assertion  whose  af- 
fective aspect  is  the  emotion  of  positive  self-feeling. 
That  this  is  true  we  may  see  clearly  in  such  a  simple  case 
of  volition  as  that  of  a  boy  overcoming  by  effort  of  the 


VOLITION  263 

will,  owing  to  the  presence  of  spectators,  an  impulse  of 
fear  that  restrains  him  from  some  desired  object.  He 
makes  his  effort  and  overcomes  his  fear-impulse,  be- 
cause, as  we  say,  he  knows  his  companions  are  looking 
at  him ;  the  impulse  of  self-display  is  evoked  on  the  side 
of  the  weaker  motive.  And  the  same  is  true  of  those 
more  refined  efforts  of  the  will  in  which  the  operation 
of  this  impulse  is  so  deeply  obscured  that  it  has  not 
hitherto  been  recognised. 

Moral  advance  and  the  development  of  volition  con- 4 
sist,  then,  not  in  the  coming  into  play  of  factors  of  a  newj 
order,  whether  called  the  will  or  the  moral  instinct  or 
conscience,  but  in  the  development  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  and  in  the  improvement  or  refinement  of  the 
"gallery"  before  which  we  display  ourselves,  the  social! 
circle  that  is  capable  of  evoking  in  us  this  impulse  of  self- 
display;  and  this  refinement  may  be  continued  until  the 
"gallery"  becomes  an  ideal  spectator  or  group  of  specta- 
tors or,  in  the  last  resort,  one's  own  critical  self  standing 
as  the  representative  of  such  spectators. 

To  this  statement  the  objection  may  be  raised  that  it 
seems  to  make  what  we  commonly  call  a  prig  of  every 
man  who  makes  any  moral  effort.  It  miay  be  said  that] 
the  ordinarily  good  man  simply  does  what  seems  to  bei 
right  as  judged  by  its  social  effects,  regardless  of  thej 
figure  he  cuts  in  his  own  or  others'  eyes ;  that  that  is  the 
only  truly  moral  conduct;  and  that  to  care  about,  am 
to  be  moved  by  the  thought  of,  the  figure  one  will  cut  is 
the  mark  of  a  prig.  But  any  one  who  raises  this  ob- 
jection and  maintains  that  the  outward-looking  attitude 
is  the  only  truly  moral  one,  proves  the  truth  of  the  posi- 
tion maintained  above  by  his  resentment  and  by  his  im- 
plied admission  that  the  attitude  of  the  agent  is  of  so 
much  importance  for  the  estimation  of  the  moral  worth 


264  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

of  conduct ;  for  he  shows  that  he  desires  that  he  him- 
self and  other  good  men  should  be  regarded  as  acting  in 
the  outward-looking  attitude  and  not  in  that  inward-look- 
ing one  which  he  characterises  as  priggish.     There  are 
ftwoj'mportant jjjjferences  betweea-  the  truly  moral  man 
jand  the  prig.     The  prig  finds  in  the  desire  for  an  ad- 
|mirable  and  praiseworthy  attitude  his  only,  or  at  least 
'^is   predominant,   motive  to   right  doing;   whereas   the 
Anoral  agent  desires  the  right  for  its  own  sake  in  virtue 
/  of  his  moral  sentiments,  and  habitually  acts  from  this 
/    motive ;  and  it  is  only  when  a  moral  conflict  arises  with 
(     the  necessity  for  moral  choice  and  effort,  that  the  self 
\   and  the   self-regarding  impulse  play   the   decisive   role. 
Again,  the  truly  moral  man  has  an  ideal  of  conduct  so 
high  that  he  can  hardly  attain  to  it,  and,  realising  this,  he 
\  is  moved  by  the  desire  not  to  fall  short  of  it  and  not  to 
incur  the  disapproval  of  his  ideal  spectators ;  whereas 
■  the  prig's  ideal  is  so  easily  within  his  reach  that  he  con- 
^stantly  attains  it  and  achieves  the  pleasure  of  self-ap- 
proval— "he  puts  in  his  thumb  and  pulls  out  a  plum, 
and  says — What  a  good  boy  am  L" 

\     Our  study  of  volition  is  not  complete  without  some 

consideration  of  the  relation  of  will  to  what  is  called 

/  character.     Character  has  been   defined  as   "that   from 

vwhich  the  will  proceeds";  and  will  might  equally  well  be 

(defined  as  "that  which  proceeds  from  character."    What, 

men,  is  character?    At  the  outset  we  said  that  character 

I  is  something  built  up  in  the  course  of  life,  and  that  it 
must  therefore  be  distinguished  from  disposition  and 
from  temperament,  which  are  in  the  main  natively  given. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  the  sentiments  con- 
stitute a  large  part  of  what  is  properly  called  character. 
But  do  they  constitute  the  whole  of  character?  Or  is 
there  some  other  acquired  feature  of  the  adult  mental 


VOLITION  265 

constitution  that  is  an  essential  feature  of  character  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  word?  That  there  is,  beside  the 
sentiments,  some  such  additional  feature  involved  in 
character,  seems  to  be  proved  by  the  existence  of  per- 
sons v^ho  have  many  strong  sentiments  and  who  yet 
cannot  be  said  to  have  strong  character.  They  are  the 
sentimentalists. 

One  essential  condition  of  strong  character  seems  to 
be  the  organisation  of  the  sentiments  in  some  harmonious 
system  or  hierarchy.  The  most  usual  or  readiest  way 
in  which  such  systematisation  of  the  sentiments  can  be 
brought  about,  is  the  predominance  of  some  one  senti- 
ment that  in  all  circumstances  is  capable  of  supplying  a 
dominant  motive,  that  directs  all  conduct  towards  the 
realisation  of  one  end  to  which  all  other  ends  are  sub- 
ordinated. The  dominant  sentiment  may  be  a  concrete  or 
an  abstract  sentiment;  it  may  be  the  love  of  money,  of 
home,  of  country,  of  justice.  When  any  such  sentiment 
acquires  decided  predominance  over  all  others,  we  call  it 
a  ruling  passion;  whenever  other  motives  conflict  with 
the  motives  arising  within  the  system  of  a  ruling  passion, 
they  go  to  the  wall,  they  are  powerless  to  oppose  it. 

Take  the  case  of  a  man  whose  ruling  passion  is  the 
love  of  home,  say  of  a  beautiful  ancestral  home  that  is 
dilapidated  and  encumbered  with  debts  when  it  first  be- 
comes his  own.  He  sets  out  to  resore  its  ancient  glories, 
perhaps  entering  upon  the  task  with  reluctance.  As  time 
goes  on  his  sentiment  gains  strength,  he  acquires  the 
habit  of  working  for  this  one  end,  of  valuing  all  things 
according  to  the  degree  in  which  they  contribute  towards 
it.  All  other  motives  become  not  only  relatively,  but  ab- 
solutely, weaker  for  lack  of  exercise ;  that  is  to  say,  they 
are  never  allowed  to  determine  action  and  so  tend  to 
atrophy  from  disuse.     The  man  loses  his  other  senti- 


266  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ments,  or  interests,  as  we  say ;  he  gives  up  sport,  art, 
horses,  and  what  not,  and  may  become  indifferent  to  the 
opinions  of  his  fellow-men,  may  be  content  to  appear 
miserly  and  to  commit  mean  actions  in  the  service  of  his 
ruling  passion. 

Can  such  a  man  be  said  to  have  acquired  a  strong 
character?  In  contrast  with  the  man  whose  sentiments 
are  but  little  systematised,  he  may  seem  to  have  strong 
character.  This  other  man  will  be  drawn  this  way  and 
that.  If  he  is  of  sympathetic  nature,  he  will  be  liable 
to  be  dominated  first  by  one,  then  by  another,  sentiment, 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  social  influences  that  bear 
upon  him,  the  opinions  and  sentiments  of  each  social 
circle  he  enters.  He  will  make  no  sustained  effort  in  any 
direction,  except  under  the  spur  of  necessity.  And  the 
man  of  specifically  weak  character,  or  lacking  in  char- 
acter, is  the  man  whose  sentiments  not  only  have  not 
been  organised  in  any  system,  but  have  not  been  con- 
solidated and  confirmed  by  habitual  action  in  accordance 
with  their  prompting,  because  the  man  has  constantly  al- 
lowed himself  to  be  moved  by  the  entirely  unorganised 
and  fleeting  impulses  evoked  sporadically  by  each  situa- 
tion as  it  arises.  Habitual  action  on  the  motives  sup- 
plied by  the  systematised  sentiments  is,  then,  an  essential 
factor  in  character,  over  and  above  the  possession  of  the 
sentiments. 

Does,  then,  the  possession  of  a  master-sentiment  or 
ruling  passion  of  any  kind,  such  as  the  passion  for  a 
home  that  we  considered  just  now,  or  one  for  money  or 
for  any  other  concrete  or  abstract  object,  in  itself  con- 
stitute character,  when  confirmed,  as  a  ruling  passion 
always  is,  by  habitual  action  from  the  motives  it  sup- 
plies ?  It  does  not  constitute  strong  character  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  words.     It  seems  to  give  the  man  a  strong 


VOLITION  267 

will  in  relation  to  all  that  affects  the  object  of  his  master- 
sentiment  ;  but  he  has  not  strong  will  and  character  in  the 
full  sense,  but  rather  what  might  be  called  specialised 
character.  In  relation  to  all  objects  and  situations  that 
are  not  in  any  wlay  connected  with  his  ruling  passion, 
or  if  the  object  of  it  is  irrevocably  taken  from  him,  such 
a  man  may  display  deplorable  weakness  or  lack  of  will 
and  character.  In  fact,  he  cannot  properly  be  said  to 
have  a  strong  will  or  to  exert  volition ;  his  ruling  passion 
supplies  him  with  motives  so  strong  that,  in  all  situations 
in  which  its  object  is  concerned,  conflict  of  motives  and 
deliberation  can  hardly  occur  and  volition  is  not  needed; 
while  in  all  other  situations  he  is  incapable  of  volition. 

There  is  only  one  sentiment  which  by  becoming  the 
master-sentiment  can  generate  strong  character  in  the 
fullest  sense,  and  that  is  the  self-regarding  sentiment. 
There  is  a  lower  imperfect  form  of  the  sentiment,  am- 
bition or  the  love  of  fame,  the  ambition  to  become  pub- 
licly recognised  as  a  man  of  this  or  that  kind  of  ability 
or  power.  When  this  sentiment  becomes  a  ruling  pas- 
sion it  may  cover  almost  the  whole  of  conduct,  may  sup- 
ply a  dominant  motive  for  almost  every  situation,  a  mo- 
tive which  arising  within  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
determines  volition  in  the  strict  sense  in  which  we  have 
defined  it.  But  it  is  not  properly  a  moral  sentiment,  and, 
though  it  may  generate  character,  the  character  formed 
through  its  agency  is  not  moral  character. 

For  the  generation  of  moral  character  in  the  fullest 
sense,  the  strong  self-regarding  sentiment  must  be  com- 
bined with  one  for  some  ideal  of  conduct,  and  it  must 
have  risen  above  dependence  on  the  regards  of  the  mass 
of  men;  and  the  motives  supplied  by  this  master-senti- 
ment in  the  service  of  the  ideal  must  attain  an  habitual 
predominance.     There   are  men,  so  well  described  by 


268  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Professor  James,  who  have  the  sentiment  and  the  ideal 
of  the  right  kind,  but  in  whom,  nevertheless,  the  fleet- 
ing, unorganised  desires  repeatedly  prove  too  strong 
for  the  will  to  overcome  them.  They  lack  the  second 
essential  factor  in  character,  the  habit  of  self-control, 
the  habitual  dominance  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment; 
perhaps  because  the  native  disposition  that  is  the  main 
root  of  self-respect  is  innately  lacking  in  strength ;  per- 
haps because  they  have  never  learnt  to  recognise  the 
awful  power  of  habit,  and  have  been  content  to  say, 
"This  time  I  will  not  trouble  to  resist  this  desire,  to  sup- 
press this  impulse ;  I  know,  that  I  can  do  so  if  I  really 
exert  my  will."  Every  time  this  happens,  the  power  of 
volition  is  weakened  relatively  to  that  of  the  unorganised 
desires ;  every  time  the  self-regarding  sentiment  masters 
an  impulse  of  some  other  source,  it  is  rendered,  accord- 
ing to  the  law  of  habit,  more  competent  to  do  so  again — 
the  will  is  strengthened  as  we  say.  And,  when  the  ha- 
bitual dominance  of  this  master-sentiment  has  been  es- 
tablished, perhaps  after  many  conflicts,  it  becomes  ca- 
pable of  determining  the  issue  of  every  conflict  so  certain- 
ly and  easily  that  conflicts  can  hardly  arise ;  it  supplies  a 
determining  motive  for  every  possible  situation,  nam.ely, 
the  desire  that  I,  the  self,  shall  do  the  right.  So  this 
motive,  in  the  individual  for  whom  it  has  repeatedly 
won  the  day  in  all  conflicts  of  motives,  acquires  the  ir- 
resistible strength  of  a  fixed  consolidated  habit ;  and,  in 
accordance  with  the  law  of  habit,  as  it  becomes  more 
and  more  fixed  and  invariable,  it  operates  more  and 
more  automatically,  i.e.,  with  diminishing  intensity  of 
its  conscious  aspect,  with  less  intensity  of  the  emotion 
and  desire  from  which  the  habit  was  generated,  and  with 
less  explicit  reference  to  the  persons  in  whose  eyes  the 
self  seeks  approval. 


VOLITION  269 

In  this  way  the  self  comes  to  rule  supreme  over 
conduct,  the  individual  is  raised  above  moral  conflict ; 
he  attains  character  in  the  fullest  sense  and  a  completely- 
generalised  will,  and  exhibits  to  the  world  that  finest 
flower  of  moral  growth,  serenity.  H|is  struggles  are 
no  longer  moral  conflicts,  but  are  intellectual  efforts 
to  discover  what  is  most  worth  doing,  what  is  most  right 
for  him  to  do. 

It  is  important  to  note,  especially  in  view  of  the 
analogy  to  be  drawn  between  the  individual  will  and  the 
national,  or  other  form  of  collective  or  general,  will,  that 
the  development  of  self-consciousness  and  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  renders  the  behaviour  of  the  indi- 
vidual progressively  less  dependent  upon  his  environ- 
ment; that  it  involves  a  continuous  advance  from  action 
of  the  type  of  immediate  response  to  the  impressions 
made  on  the  sense-organs  and  an  approximation  towards 
complete  self-determination,  towards  conduct  that  is  the 
issue  of  conditions  wholly  comprised  within  the  con- 
stitution of  the  mind.  Like  the  evolution  of  mind  in  the 
race,  this  advance  involves  also  a  progress  from  pre- 
dominantly mechanical  to  predominantly  teleological  de- 
termination, a  continuous  increase  of  the  part  played  by 
final  causes  relatively  to  that  of  purely  mechanical  causes 
in  the  determination  of  the  behaviour  of  the  individual. 
No  doubt  the  vague  mjovements  of  the  infant  are  tele- 
ological or  purposive  in  the  lowliest  sense  of  the  word ; 
but  actions  do  not  become  the  expressions  of  conscious 
purpose  until  the  individual  attains  the  capacity  of  repre- 
senting the  end  towards  which  he  feels  himself  impelled. 
At  the  intermediate  level  of  development  of  the  per- 
sonality, the  ends  or  final  causes  of  his  action  are  im- 
mediate, various,  and  often  inharmonious  with  one  an- 
other;  with  the  development  of  a   unified  personality, 


270  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

(i.e.,  of  clear  self-consciousness,  a  consistent  ideal  of 
conduct  and  a  strong  sentiment  for  the  self  and  for  ;'\it 
ideal),  these  are  more  and  more  superseded  and  -on- 
trolled  by  a  single  all-powerful  final  cause,  the  idea  of 
the  self. 

The  foregoing  account  of  volition  differs  from  those 
of  other  writers  in  the  stress  laid  upon  the  systematic 
organisation  of  the  conative  dispositions  in  the  moral  and 
self-regarding  sentiments ;  and  its  principal  claim  to 
originality  is  the  attempt  made  to  exhibit  the  continuit) 
of  the  development  of  the  highest  types  of  human  will 
^  and  character  from  the  primary  instinctive  dispositions 
\  that  we  have  in  common  with  the  animals.  Especial 
importance,  as  an  essential  factor  in  volition,  has  been 
attached  to  the  impulse  of  self-assertion  or  self-display 
and  its  concomitant  emotion  of  positive  self-feeling.  It 
ij  may  seem  paradoxical  and  repugnant  to  our  sense  of  the 
nobility  of  moral  conduct,  that  it  should  be  exhibited  as 
dependent  on  an  impulse  that  we  share  with  the  animals 
and  which  in  them  plays  a  part  that  is  of  secondary  im- 
portance and  utterly  amoral.  It  should,  however,  be  re- 
membered that  the  humble  nature  of  the  remote  origins 
of  any  thing  we  justly  admire  or  revere  in  nowise  de- 
tracts from  its  intrinsic  worth  or  dignity,  and  that  the 
ascertainment  of  those  origins  need  not,  and  should  not, 
diminish  by  one  jot  our  admiration  or  reverence. 


SECTION  II 

THE    OPERATION    OF    THE    PRIMARY    TEN- 
"     DENCIES  OF  THE  HUMAN  MIND  IN 
THE  LIFE  OF  SOCIETIES 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  REPRODUCTIVE  AND  THE  PARENTAL  INSTINCTS 

IN  the  first  section  of  this  book  certain  primary  or 
fundamental  tendencies  of  the  human  mind  were 
distinguished  and  described,  and  it  was  asserted  that 
these  are  the  prime  movers,  the  great  motive  powers,  of 
human  life  and  society,  and  that  therefore  a  true  under- 
standing of  the  nature  and  operation  of  these  tendencies 
must  form  the  essential  basis  of  all  social  psychology, 
and  in  fact  of  the  social  sciences  in  general.  I  propose 
to  devote  this  section  to  the  illustration  of  the  truth  of 
this  position,  and  to  consider  very  briefly  some  of  the 
principal  ways  in  which  each  of  these  primary  tendencies 
plays  its  part  in  shaping  the  social  life  of  man  and  in 
determining  the  forms  of  instrtutions  and  of  social 
organisation. 

The  processes  to  be  dealt  with  are  so  complex,  the 
operations  of  the  different  factors  are  so  intricately 
combined,  their  effects  are  so  variously  interwoven  and 
fused  in  the  forms  of  social  organisations  and  institu- 
tions, that  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  attempt  to  prove 
the  truth  of  most  of  the  views  advanced.    I  would  there- 

271 


272  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

fore  repeat  and  especially  emphasise  in  regard  to  this 
section  the  remark  made  in  the  introduction  to  this 
volume  to  the  effect  that,  in  spite  of  the  dogmatic  form 
adopted  for  the  sake  of  brevity  and  clearness  of  exposi- 
tion, my  aim  is  to  be  suggestive  rather  than  dogmatic,  to 
stimulate  thought  and  promote  discussion  rather  than 
to  lay  down  conclusions  for  the  acceptance  of  the  reader. 
The  reproductive  instinct  is  in  a  sense  antisocial  rather 
than  social.  Nevertheless  its  importance  for  society 
needs  no  demonstration ;  for  it  is  clear  that,  if  it  could 
be  abolished  in  any  people,  that  people  would  very  soon 
disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  In  all  animal 
species  the  strength  of  this  instinct  is  maintained  at  a 
very  high  level  by  natural  selection ;  for  the  production 
by  each  generation  of  offspring  more  numerous  than 
themselves — in  some  cases  many  thousand  times  more 
numerous — has  been  an  essential  condition  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  species,  of  the  better  adaptation  of  species 
to  their  environment,  and  of  the  evolution  of  new  species. 
I  In  the  human  species  also  it  is  one  of  the  strongest  of  the 
'instincts;  so  strong  is  it  that  the  control  and  regulation 
of  its  impulse  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems  for 
the  individual  and  for  society.  In  every  age  and  country 
its  operation  is  to  some  extent  regulated  by  rigid  social 
customs,  or  by  laws,  which  are  commonly  enforced  by 
the  severest  penalties. 

In  many  animal  species  the  reproductive  instinct  se- 
cures the  perpetuation  of  the  species  without  the  co- 
operation of  any  parental  instinct,  whilst  some  animals* 
e.g.,  the  working  bee,  have  a  parental  but  no  reproduc- 
tive instinct ;  but  all  human  beings,  with  rare  exceptions, 
possess  both  these  instincts ;  and  there  is  probably  some 
degree  of  correlation  between  the  strengths  of  the  two 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  273 

instincts,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  individuals  in  whom  one 
of  them  is  strong  the  other  will  also  be  strong  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  and  vice  versa.  The  social  operations 
and  effects  of  these  two  instincts  are  in  certain  respects 
so  intimately  interwoven  and  blended  that  they  cannot 
be  clearly  distinguished.  This  intimate  association  of 
the  two  instincts,  which  is  undoubtedly  of  great  social 
advantage,  makes  it  necessary  to  discuss  them  conjointly. 
The  work  of  IMalthus  on  "Population''  was  the  first 
to  attract  general  attention  to  the  social  operation  of 
these  instincts.  Malthus  pointed  out  that,  if  these  in- 
stincts were  given  free  play  in  any  society  of  fairly  se- 
cure organisation,  the  rate  of  increase  of  the  population 
would  be  exceedingly  rapid,  and  that  the  actual  rate  of 
increase  in  all  civilised  societies,  being  much  lower  than 
the  maximal  rate,  implies  that  the  instincts  are  commonly 
controlled  in  some  degree.  The  population  of  most 
European  countries  has  increased  during  the  historic  pe- 
riod at  a  very  slow  rate,  except  during  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  when  the  invention  of  so  many  forms 
of  machinery  almost  suddenly  multiplied  man's  power  of 
producing  the  necessaries  of  life.  That  of  some 
European  countries  has  passed  through  periods  of  great 
diminution ;  thus  it  is  estimated  that  Spain  enjoyed 
towards  the  close  of  the  Roman  occupation  a  popula- 
tion of  twenty  millions,  and  that  this  sank  as  low  as  six 
millions  in  the  eighteenth  century,^  Even  when  we 
remember  the  ravages  made  by  plague,  famine,  and 
war,  and  the  large  number  of  persons  that  throughout 
the  Middle  Ages  was  condemned  to  celibacy  through  the 
influence  of  the  Church,  this  slow  rate  of  increase,  or 
actual  decrease,  of  population  remains  something  of  a 

*  See   Buckle's   "History  of    Civilisation  in  Europe." 


274  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

mystery.*  But  it  is  clear  that  in  the  present  age  prudent 
control  of  these  instincts  plays  a  great  part  in  keeping 
down  the  birth-rate.  The  population  of  France  is  almost 
(or,  but  for  immigration,  quite)  stationary,  and  it  is  no- 
torious that  this  is  due  very  largely  to  prudent  control. 
And  statistics,  showing  that  the  numbers  of  marriages 
and  births  in  various  countries  vary  with  the  cost  of  the 
prime  necessaries  of  life  and  with  the  prosperity  of 
trade  and  agriculture,  prove  that  such  control  plays  its 
part  in  most  of  the  civilised  countries. 

The  parental  instinct  is  the  foundation  of  the  family, 
and,  with  few  exceptions,  all  who  have  given  serious  at- 
tention to  the  question  are  agreed  that  the  stability  of 
the  family  is  the  prime  condition  of  a  healthy  state  of 
society  and  of  the  stability  of  every  community.^  Al- 
though a  contrary  opinion  has  been  maintained  by  cer- 
tain writers,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  the 
family  was  the  earliest  form  of  human  society.'  We 
have  no  certain  record  of  any  tribe  or  community  of 
human  beings  in  which  the  family  in  one  form  or  another 
does  not  exist.  It  is  reduced  perhaps  to  its  lowest 
terms  among  some  of  the  negrito  peoples,  where  the  co- 
operation of  the  father  with  the  mother  in  the  care  of 
the  offspring — which  is  the  essential  feature  of  the  family 

*  Professor  Pollard  attributes  it  in  part  to  voluntary  control 
induced  by  the  system  of  land  tenure,  as  in  modern  France. 
"Factors  in  Modern   History,"  p.   135. 

*  For  an  excellent  discussion  of  the  importance  of  the  family 
see  Mrs.  Bosanquet's  "The  Family,"  and  the  works  of  the  school 
of  Le  Play,  especially  "La  Constitution  Essentielle  de  I'Hu- 
manite." 

'  Professor  Keane  asserts  this  to  be  the  issue  of  the  lively 
discussion  that  has  been  waged  on  this  topic.  See  his  "Eth- 
nology." 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  275 

— continues  only  until  the  child  is  weaned  and  can  walk.^ 
It  is  probable  that  these  two  instincts  in  conjunction, 
the  reproductive  and  the  parental  instincts,  directly  im- 
pel human  beings  to  a  greater  sum  of  activity,  effort, 
and  toil,  than  all  the  other  motives  of  human  action 
taken  together. 

The  parental  instinct  especially  impels  to  actions  that 
involve  self-sacrifice,  in  the  forms  of  suppression  of  the 
narrower  egoistic  tendencies  and  of  heavy  and  unremit- 
ting toil  on  behalf  of  the  offspring.  Since  these  sacri- 
fices and  exertions  on  behalf  of  the  children  are  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  the  continued  existence  and  the  flour- 
ishing of  any  society,  whether  small  or  large,  we  find  that 
among  all  peoples,  save  the  very  lowest  in  the  scale  of 
culture,  the  institution  of  marriage  and  the  duties  of 
parenthood  are  surrounded  by  the  most  solemn  social 
sanctions,  which  are  embodied  in  traditional  public  opin- 
ion and  in  custom,  in  formal  laws,  and  in  the  rites  and 
doctrines  of  religion.  These  sanctions  are  in  the  main 
the  more  solemnly  and  rigidly  maintained  by  any  society, 
the  higher  the  degree  of  civilisation  attained  by  it  and 
the  freer  and  more  nearly  universal  the  play  of  the  in- 
tellectual faculties  among  the  members  of  that  society. 
This  correlation  is  accounted  for  by  the  following  con- 
siderations. The  use  of  reason  and  intelligent  foresight 
modifies  profoundly  the  operation  of  all  the  instincts,  and 
is  especially  apt  to  modify  and  work  against  the  play  of 

*  It  is,  I  think,  true  without  exception  that  the  family  is  found 
in  every  animal  species,  of  which  the  males,  as  well  as  the 
females,  are  endowed  with  the  parental  instinct  and  co-operate 
in  the  care  of  the  young ;  that  is  to  say,  the  co-existence  of  the 
reproductive  and  parental  instincts  in  the  members  of  both 
sexes  suffices  to  determine  the  family,  the  parental  impulse  be- 
ing commonly  directed  to  the  adult  partner,  as  well  as  to  the 
offspring. 


276  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  reproductive  and  parental  instincts.  Among  the 
higher  animals  these  instincts  suffice  to  secure  the  per- 
petuation of  the  species  by  their  blind  workings.  And  we 
may  suppose  that  the  same  was  true  of  primitive  human 
societies.^  But  with  the  increase  of  the  power  and  of  the 
habit  of  regulating  instinctive  action  by  intelligent  fore- 
sight, the  egoistic  impulses  must  have  tended  to  suppress 
the  working  of  the  parental  instinct ;  hence  the  need  for 
the  support  of  the  instinct  by  strong  social  sanctions ; 
hence  also  the  almost  universal  distribution  of  such  sanc- 
tions. For  those  societies  in  which  no  such  sanctions  be- 
came organised  must  have  died  out ;  while  only  those  in 
which,  as  intelligence  became  more  powerful,  these  sanc- 
tions became  more  formidable  have  in  the  long-run  sur- 
vived and  reached  any  considerable  level  of  civilisation. 
There  has  been,  we  may  say,  a  never-ceasing  race  be- 
tween the  development  of  individual  intelligence  and  the 
increasing  power  of  these  social  sanctions;  and  wherever 
the  former  has  got  ahead  of  the  latter,  there  social  dis- 
aster and  destruction  have  ensued. 

At  the  present  time  many  savage  tribes  and  barbarous 
communities  are  illustrating  these  principles;  they  are 
rapidly  dying  out,  owing  to  the  failure  of  the  social 
sanctions  to  give  sufficient  support  to  the  parental  in- 
stinct against  developing  intelligence.  It  is  largely  for 
this  reason  that  contact  with  civilisation  proves  so  fatal 
to  so  many  savage  peoples;  for  such  contact  stimulates 
their  intelligence,  while  it  breaks  the  power  of  their  cus- 
toms and  social  sanctions  generally  and  fails  to  replace 

*  It  has  been  asserted  by  Messrs.  Spencer  and  Gillen  ("TJie 
Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia")  that  some  of  the  Aus- 
tralian tribes  are  utterly  ignorant  of  the  relation  of  the  repro- 
ductive act  to  child-birth,  but  doubt  has  been  thrown  on  this 
statement. 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  277 

them  by  any  equally  efficient.^  Aweakeningof  the  social 
sanctions  of  the  parental  and  reproductive  instincts  by 
developing  intelligence  has  played  a  great  part  also  in  the 
destruction  of  some  of  the  most  brilliant  and  powerful 
societies  of  the  past,  notably  those  of  ancient  Greece  and 
Rome.^ 

Among  peoples  of  the  lower  cultures  the  failure  of 
the  social  sanctions  to  maintain  the  predominance  of 
the  reproductive  and  parental  instincts  over  the  egoistic 
tendencies  supported  by  intelligence,  shows  itself  mainly 
in  the  form  of  infanticide ;  in  the  highly  civilised  nations 
it  takes  the  forms  of  pre-natal  infanticide,  of  great  ir- 
regularity of  the  relations  between  the  sexes,  of  failure 
of  respect  for  marriage,  of  aberrations  of  the  reproduc- 
tive instinct  (which  so  readily  arise  wherever  the  social 
sanctions  become  weakened),  and,  lastly,  of  voluntary 
celibacy  and  restriction  of  the  family.^ 

^  The  well  meant  efforts  of  missionaries  may  sometimes  play  a 
considerable  part  in  this  process ;  e.g.,  it  has  been  observed  that 
the  abolition  of  polygamy,  in  communities  in  which  females  are 
more  numerous  than  the  males,  has  led  to  such  gross  irregulari- 
ties in  the  sexual  relations  as  to  diminish  greatly  the  rate  of, 
reproduction. 

*  See  the  frequent  references  to  the  prevalence  of  voluntary 
childlessness  in  Professor  Dill's  two  volumes,  "Roman  Society  in 
the  Last  Century  of  the  Empire,"  and  '"Roman  Society  from 
Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,"  also  M.  de  Lapouge's  "Les  Selec- 
tions Sociales,"  in  which  the  share  of  these  influences  in  the  de- 
struction of  Ancient  Greece  is  discussed  in  some  detail.  Dr.  W. 
Schallmayer  argues  to  similar  effect  of  the  decline  of  both 
Greece  and  Rome"  (Vererbung  u.  Auslese  im  Lebenslauf  d. 
Volker"). 

'  One  of  the  most  remarkable  illustrations  of  the  tendencies 
discussed  in  this  paragraph  was  afforded  by  the  flourishing 
among  the  natives  of  the  Sandwich  islands  of  an  association, 
the  members  of  which  bound  themselves  on  frankly  hedonistic 
grounds  to  avoid  parenthood. 


278  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd^  has  argued  that  the  prime  social 
function  of  any  system  of  supernatural  or  religious  sanc- 
tions is  the  regulation  and  the  support  of  the  parental  in- 
stinct against  the  effects  of  developing  intelligence.  This 
statement  contains  a  large  element  of  truth,  though  it  is 
perhaps  an  overstatement  of  the  case.  However  that 
may  be,  it  is  clear  that  one  of  the  most  momentous 
problems  facing  the  most  highly  civilised  peoples  of  the 
present  time  is  whether  they  will  be  able  to  maintain  their 
places  against  their  rivals  in  the  international  struggle,  in 
spite  of  the  secularisation  of  social  sanctions  and  of  the 
institution  of  marriage,  and  in  spite  of  the  rapid  spread 
of  the  habit  of  independent  thought  and  action  among 
the  people.  For  all  these  are  influences  that  weaken  those 
social  supports  of  the  parental  instinct  which  seem  to 
have  been  necessary  for  the  continued  welfare  of  the 
societies  of  every  age. 

Up  to  this  point  of  our  discussion  we  have  assumed 
that  the  strength  of  these  two  instincts  remains  un- 
changed from  generation  to  generation,  and  that  any 
changes  of  their  operation  in  societies  are  due  to  changes 
of  customs  and  social  sanctions.  But  this  assumption 
may  be  questioned.  It  may  be  that  the  instincts  them- 
selves are  growing  weaker.  And  this  is  the  assumption 
commonly  made  by  writers  in  the  newspapers  who  call 
attention  from  time  to  time  to  the  fall  of  the  birth-rate, 
which  has  continued  at  an  increasing  rate  in  nearly  all 
civilised  countries  during  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years. 
They  commonly  attribute  it  to  a  decay  or  progressive 
weakening  of  the  maternal  instinct,  under  some  mysteri- 
ous influence  of  civiHsation.  But  there  is  no  good  evi- 
dence that  any  such  decay  is  occurring;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  number  of  considerations  justify  us  in  as- 
*  "Social   Evolution." 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  279 

?'2rting  with  some  confidence  that  the  fall  of  the  birth- 
rate, which  seems  inevitably  to  accompany  the  attain- 
ment of  a  high  level  of  civilisation,  is  not  due  to  any 
such  decay  of  the  parental  instinct,  but  rather  is  to  be 
attributed  to  social  changes  of  the  kinds  noted  above. 
In  the  first  place,  this  instinct,  like  all  other  human  and 
animal  qualities,  is  subject  to  individual  variations  which, 
in  our  present  state  of  ignorance,  we  call  spontaneous ; 
and  it  is  probable  that  in  every  society  there  have  been 
persons  in  whom  it  was  decidedly  less  strong  than  in  the 
average  human  being.  Now,  in  respect  to  this  instinct,  as 
Avell  as  the  instinct  of  reproduction,  natural  selection 
operates  in  the  most  certain  and  direct  fashion ;  for  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  persons  in  whom  either,  or  both, 
of  these  instincts  are  weak  will  on  the  average  have  fewer 
children  than  those  in  whom  the  instincts  are  strong. 
This  particular  variation  is  thus  constantly  eliminated, 
and  the  strength  of  the  instinct  is  thereby  maintained 
from  generation  to  generation.  This  deduction  is 
strongly  supported  by  the  fact  that  in  our  own  country 
one-quarter  of  the  people  of  each  generation  become  the 
parents  of  about  one-half  of  the  population  of  the  suc- 
ceeding generation.^  There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  among 
this  quarter  of  the  population,  the  parental,  and  probably 
also  the  reproductive,  instinct  is  on  the  average  stronger 
than  in  the  remaining  three-quarters  who  produce  the 
other  half  of  the  next  generation.^ 

This  view  receives  further  strong  support  from  the 

*  See  Professor  Karl  Pearson's  "Chances  of  Death." 

*  There  are  certainly  among  the  celibates  of  our  population  a 
certain  number  of  persons  who  know  of  sexual  desire  only  by 
hearsay  and  who  regard  it  as  a  strange  madness  from  which 
tiiey  are  fortunately  free.  Cf.  Professor  Forel's  "Sexuelle 
Frage." 


28o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

fact  that  it  is  among  the  most  cultured  and  leisured 
classes  of  any  community  that  the  falling  birth-rate  first 
and  most  strongly  manifests  itself.  This  seems  to  have 
been  the  case  in  Greece  and  Rome,  and  it  has  been 
statistically  established  for  this  country  as  well  as  for 
several  others  ;^  while  in  the  United  States  of  America 
the  difference  in  this  respect  between  the  cultured 
descendants  of  the  earlier  colonists  in  the  Eastern  States 
and  the  less  civilised  hordes  of  later  immigrants,  seems 
to  be  generally  admitted  and  to  be  recognised  as  a  mat- 
ter for  serious  regret.  And  it  is  of  course  among  the 
cultured  classes  that  the  supernatural  and  social  sanc- 
tions are  most  weakened  by  the  habit  of  independent 
thought  and  action.  Again,  it  is  in  Australia  where  the 
supernatural  and  other  sanctions  are  relatively  weak  and 
the  average  level  of  education  and  intelligence  is  high, 
that  the  fall  of  the  birth-rate  is  exhibited  very  markedly 
by  all  classes  of  the  community.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Jews  are  a  people  that  has  been  at  a  fairly  high  level  of 
civilisation  more  continuously  and  for  a  longer  total  pe- 
riod than  any  other  outside  Asia ;  yet  they  remain  prolific, 
for  the  supernatural  and  social  sanctions  that  maintain 
the  family  have  retained  an  undiminished  strength;  a 
fact  which  may  be  ascribed  to  the  peculiar  position  of 
Jewish  communities :  they  live  mingled  with  others,  yet 
distinct  from  them,  a  position  which  results  in  the  con- 
stant shedding  or  loss  from  the  community  of  those  mem- 
bers who  find  its  religious  teachings  or  social  institutions 
unsuited  to  their  temperament  and  disposition. 

We  may  find  similar  evidence  in  the  history  of  other 
peoples  of  long-continued  civilisation,  evidence,  that  is, 
that  where  religious  and  other  sanctions  give  adequate 

'  See  especially  David  Heron  (Drapers'  Company  Research 
Memoir),  "On  the  Relation  of  Fertility  to  Social  Status,"  1906. 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  281 

support  to  the  family  instincts  no  serious  diminution  of 
fertility  occurs.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  ancestor- 
worship  is  so  eminently  favourable  to  national  stability. 
The  cult  of  the  ancestor  and  of  the  family,  with  the 
patria  potestas,  the  immense  authority  given  by  law  and 
custom  to  the  head  of  the  family,  counted  for  much  in 
the  strength  and  stability  of  ancient  Rome.  In  fact,  the 
high  civilisations  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  rested  on 
a  firm  basis  of  this  kind  until  their  decline  began. ^ 

The  cult  of  the  ancestor  has  played  a  similar  part  in 
Japan,  For  there,  as  in  the  early  days  of  Greece  and  of 
Rome,  the  welfare  of  the  dead  man  is  dependent  on  the 
daily  ministrations  of  his  living  descendants,  and  they 
in  turn,  according  to  the  still-prevailing  belief,  owe  their 
successes  and  prosperity  to  the  active  benevolence  of  the 
spirits  of  their  ancestors.^  Hence  the  interests  of  each 
generation  are  intimately  bound  up  with  those  of  the 
generations  that  have  gone  before  and  of  those  that  shall 
come  after.  Hence,  in  order  to  secure  his  own  happiness 
as  well  as  that  of  his  ancestors  and  descendants,  a  man's 
first  care  and  duty  is  to  bring  up  a  family  that  will  carry 
on  the  ancestral  cult.  It  is  probable  that  China  also 
owes  her  immense  stability  and  latent  power  in  large 
measure  to  similar  causes. 

Hitherto  we  have  considered  the  social  importance  of 
the  parental  instinct  only  in  its  relation  to  the  family. 
But,  if  our  account  of  this  instinct  in  Chapter  III.  was 
correct,  it  is  the  source,  not  only  of  parental  tenderness, 
but   of  all  tender   emotions   and   truly   benevolent   im- 

*  See  especially  "La  Cite  Antique,"  by  Fustel  de  Coulanges. 

*  See  the  books  of  the  late  Laf cadio  Hearn,  especially  "Japan : 
an  Interpretation."  His  account  was  borne  out  by  the  recent 
newspaper-accounts  of  the  solemn  national  thanksgiving  to 
ancestors  after  the  successes  of  the  late  war. 


282  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

pulses,  is  the  great  spring  of  moral  indignation,  and  en- 
ters in  some  degree  into  every  sentiment  that  can  prop- 
erly be  called  love.  We  shall  then  attribute  to  it  in  these 
derived  or  secondary  applications  a  wider  or  narrower 
field  of  influence  in  shaping  social  actions  and  institu- 
tions, according  as  we  incline  to  see  much  or  little  of  true 
benevolence  at  work  in  the  world.  That  the  impulse  of 
this  instinct  is  one  of  the  great  social  forces  seems  to  me 
an  indisputable  fact.  Especially  is  this  true  in  many  of 
the  countries  in  which  the  Christian  and  the  Buddhist 
religions  prevail.  Some  writers  would  seem  to  regard 
the  charity  and  benevolence  displayed  in  such  societies 
as  wholly  due  to  the  mild  teaching  of  these  religions. 
But  no  teaching  and  no  system  of  social  or  religious 
sanctions  could  induce  benevolence  in  any  people  if  their 
minds  were  wholly  lacking  in  this  instinct.  Such  in- 
fluences can  only  favour  or  repress  in  some  degree  the 
habitual  and  customary  manifestations  of  the  innate  ten- 
dencies; and  the  fact  that  these  religions  have  gained  so 
wide  acceptance  shows  that  they  appeal  to  some  universal 
element  of  the  human  mind;  while  the  specially  strong 
appeal  of  Christianity  to  the  feminine  mind,^  the  Catholic 
cult  of  the  Mother  and  Infant,  and  the  unmistakably 
feminine  cast  of  the  whole  system  as  compared  with 
Mohammedan  and  other  religions,  shows  that  we  are 
right  in  identifying  this  element  with  the  parental,  the 
primarily  maternal,  instinct. 

This  instinct,  save  in  its  primary  application  in  the 
form  of  the  mother's  protection  of  her  child,  is  not,  like 
the  reproductive  instinct,  one  of  overwhelming  force; 
hence  the  extent  of  its  secondary  manifestations  is  pro- 
foundly  influenced  by   custom   and   training.      To   this 

'  According  to  Mr.  Fielding  Hall,  the  same  is  true  of  Bud- 
dhism; see  "The  Soul  of  a  People,"  and  "A  People  at  School." 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  283 

fact  must  be  ascribed  in  the  main  the  very  great  differ- 
ences between  communities  of  different  times  and  races 
in  respect  to  the  force  with  which  the  instinct  operates 
outside  the  family.  The  savage  who  is  a  tender  father 
may  behave  in  an  utterly  brutal  manner  to  all  human  be- 
ings other  than  the  members  of  his  tribe.  But  such 
brutal  behaviour  is  sanctioned  by  the-  public  opinion  of 
the  tribe,  prescribed  by  custom  and  example,  and  pro- 
voked by  tribal  feuds.  That  races  differ  in  respect  to  the 
strength  of  this  instinct  is  probable ;  but  that  any  are 
entirely  devoid  of  it,  it  is  difficult  to  believe — if  only 
because  such  a  race  would  fail  to  rear  its  progeny,  and 
therefore  could  not  survive.  Everywhere  one  may  see 
traces  of  its  influence.  In  the  ancient  classical  societies 
it  seems  to  have  played  a  very  restricted  part ;  but,  even 
in  the  worst  days  of  Rome's  brutal  degradation,  many  a 
man  was  kindly  to  his  slaves,  and  the  practice  of  manu- 
mission was  at  times  so  prevalent  as  to  excite  some  un- 
easiness. On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  necessary  to  sup- 
pose that  the  great  extension  of  benevolent  action,  which 
is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  notable  features  of  the 
present  age  of  our  civilisation,  denotes  any  increase  in 
the  innate  strength  of  this  instinct.  How  this  great  ex- 
tension has  been  brought  about  in  modern  times  is  a  most 
interesting  problem,  the  discussion  of  which  does  not 
fall  within  the  scope  of  this  book.  But  we  may  note 
some  of  its  most  important  social  effects. 

Am.ong  the  most  obvious  of  these  effects  are  the  hu- 
manitarian regulations  of  civilised  warfare,  and  the 
devotion  of  vast  amounts  of  human  energy,  of  money  and 
material  resources  of  all  kinds,  by  our  modern  civilised 
communities  to  the  relief  of  the  poor  and  suffering,  to 
the  hospitals,  and  to  the  many  organisations  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  charity  and  the  prevention  of  cruelty.     A 


284  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

social  change  of  more  importance  from  the  point  of 
view  of  world-history  is  the  abolition  of  slavery  and 
serfdom  throughout  the  regions  of  Western  Civilisation. 
This  great  change,  which  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  civilisation,  is  undoubtedly  attributable  to  the  increased 
influence  of  this  instinct  in  modern  times.  It  is  no  doubt 
true  that  the  main  question  at  issue  in  the  American  war 
of  North  and  South  was  the  maintenance  of  the  federal 
union  of  the  States.  And  there  is  some  truth  in  the 
cynical  dictum  that  the  abolition  of  slavery  comes  when 
slavery  ceases  to  be  economically  advantageous — the 
specially  advantageous  conditions  being  an  unlimited  area 
of  highly  fertile  soil  creating  a  demand  for  an  abundance 
of  unskilled  labour.  But  in  the  liberation  of  the  slaves 
of  the  British  West  Indies,  which  cost  the  English  peo- 
ple twenty  milHons  of  hard  cash,  disinterested  benevo- 
lence certainly  played  a  great  and  essential  part ;  and  the 
same  is  true  of  the  liberation  of  the  serfs  of  Russia  in 
1861.^ 

But  of  still  more  wide-reaching  importance  is  the  ad- 
mission to  political  power  of  the  masses  of  the  people, 
which  in  this  and  several  other  countries  has  been  car- 
ried very  nearly  as  far  as  legislation  can  carry  it.  This 
no  doubt  has  been  due  to  the  rise  of  a  demand  for  such 
admission  on  the  part  of  the  masses ;  but,  as  Mr.  B. 
Kidd^  has  forcibly  argued,  this  demand  was  itself  largely 
created  by  the  teachings  of  leaders  moved  by  the 
benevolent  impulse,  and  it  would  have  failed  to  obtain 
satisfaction  if  the  power-holding  classes  had  been  de- 
void of  this  impulse,  and  if  very  many  of  their  members 
had  not  been  moved  by  it  to  accede  to  this  demand  and  to 
aid  in  the  accomplishment  of  this  great  political  change, 

*  See  Sir  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace's  "Russia,"  Chapter  xxix. 
'"Principles  of  Western  Civilisation."  ' 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    INSTINCT   OF    PUGNACITY 

''  I  "^HE  instinct  of  pugnacity  has  played  a  part  second  i 
-^  to  none  in  the  evolution  of  social  organisation,  and 
in  the  present  age  it  operates  more  powerfully  than 
any  other  in  producing  demonstrations  of  collective  emo- 
tion and  action  on  a  great  scale.  The  races  of  men  cer- 
tainly differ  greatly  in  respect  to  the  innate  strength 
of  this  instinct ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  it  has 
grown  weaker  among  ourselves  under  centuries  of  civil- 
isation; rather,  it  is  probable,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
that  it  is  stronger  in  the  European  peoples  than  it  was 
in  primitive  man.  But  its  modes  of  expression  have 
changed  with  the  growth  of  civilisation ;  as  the  develop- 
ment of  law  and  custom  discourages  and  renders  un- 
necessary the  bodily  combat  of  individuals,  this  gives 
place  to  the  collective  combat  of  comimunities  and  to  the 
more  refined  forms  of  combat  within  communities.  It  is 
observable  that,  when  a  pugnacious  people  is  forcibly 
brought  under  a  system  of  civilised  legality,  its  members 
are  apt  to  display  an  extreme  and,  to  our  minds,  absurd 
degree  of  litigiousness. 

The  replacement  of  individual  by  collective  pugnacity 
is  most  clearly  illustrated  by  barbarous  peoples  living  in 
small,  strongly  organised  communities.  Within  such 
communities  individual  combat  and  even  expressions  of 
personal  anger  may  be  almost   completely   suppressed, 

285 


286  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

while  the  pugnacious  instinct  finds  its  vent  in  perpetual 
warfare  between  communities,  whose  relations  remain 
subject  to  no  law.  As  a  rule  no  material  benefit  is 
gained,  and  often  none  is  sought,  in  these  tribal  wars, 
which  often  result  in  the  weakening  and  even  the  ex- 
termination of  whole  villages  or  tribes.  Central  Borneo 
is  one  of  the  few  regions  in  which  this  state  of  things 
still  persists.  The  people  are  very  intelligent  and  socia- 
ble and  kindly  to  one  another  within  each  village  com- 
munity; but,  except  in  those  regions  in  which  European 
influence  has  asserted  itself,  the  neighbouring  villages 
and  tribes  live  in  a  state  of  chronic  warfare;  all  are  kept 
in  constant  fear  of  attack,  whole  villages  are  often  ex- 
terminated, and  the  population  is  in  this  way  kept  down 
very  far  below  the  limit  at  which  any  pressure  on  the 
means  of  subsistence  could  arise.  This  perpetual  war- 
fare, like  the  squabbles  of  a  roomful  of  quarrelsome 
children,  seems  to  be  almost  wholly  and  directly  due  to 
the  uncomplicated  operation  of  the  instinct  of  pugnacity. 
No  material  benefits  are  sought ;  a  few  heads,  and  some- 
times a  slave  or  two,  are  the  only  trophies  gained ;  and, 
if  one  asks  of  an  intelligent  chief  why  he  keeps  up  this 
senseless  practice  of  going  on  the  warpath,  the  best  rea- 
son he  can  give  is  that  unless  he  does  so  his  neighbours 
will  not  respect  him  and  his  people,  and  will  fall  upon 
them  and  exterminate  them.  How  shall  we  begin  to  un- 
derstand the  prevalence  of  such  a  state  of  affairs,  if  we 
regard  man  as  a  rational  creature  guided  only  by  intel- 
ligent self-interest,  and  if  we  neglect  to  take  account  of 
his  instincts?  And  it  is  not  among  barbarous  or  savage 
peoples  only  that  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  works  in  this 
way.  The  history  of  Christendom  is  largely  the  history 
of  devastating  wars  from  which  few  individuals  or  so- 
cieties have  reaped  any  immediate  benefit,  and  in  the 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY         287 

causation  of  which  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  of  the  rulers, 
or  of  the  masses  of  the  peoples,  has  played  a  leading 
part.  In  our  own  age  the  same  instinct  makes  of  Europe 
an  armed  camp  occupied  by  twelve  million  soldiers,  the 
support  of  which  is  a  heavy  burden  on  all  the  peoples ; 
and  we  see  how,  more  instantly  than  ever  before,  a  whole 
nation  may  be  moved  by  the  combative  instinct — a  slight 
to  the  British  flag,  or  an  insulting  remark  in  some  foreign 
newspaper,  sends  a  wave  of  angry  emotion  sweeping 
across  the  country,  accompanied  by  all  the  characteristics 
of  crude  collective  mentation,  and  two  nations  are  ready 
to  rush  into  a  war  that  cannot  fail  to  be  disastrous  to 
both  of  them.  The  most  serious  task  of  modern  states- 
manship is,  perhaps,  to  discount  and  to  control  these 
outbursts  of  collective  pugnacity.  At  the  present  time 
custom  is  only  just  beginning  to  exert  some  control  over 
this  international  pugnacity,  and  we  are  still  very  far 
from  the  time  when  international  law,  following  in  the 
wake  of  custom,  will  render  the  pugnacity  of  nations  as 
needless  as  that  of  the  individuals  of  highly  civilised 
states,  and  physical  combats  between  them  as  relatively 
infrequent. 

It  might  seem  at  first  sight  that  this  instinct,  which 
leads  men  and  societies  so  often  to  enter  blindly  upon 
deadly  contests  that  in  many  cases  are  destructive  to 
both  parties,  could  only  be  a  survival  from  man's  brutal 
ancestry,  and  that  an  early  and  a  principal  feature  of 
social  evolution  would  have  been  the  eradication  of  this 
instinct  from  the  human  mind.  But  a  little  reflection 
will  show  us  that  its  operation,  far  from  being  wholly 
injurious,  has  been  one  of  the  essential  factors  in  the 
evolution  of  the  higher  forms  of  social  organisation,  and, 
in  fact,  of  those  specifically  social  qualities  of  man,  the 


288  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

high  development  of  which  is  an  essential  condition  of 
the  higher  social  life. 

It  was  said  above  that  the  earliest  form  of  human 
society  was  in  all  probability  the  family,  and,  indeed, 
it  is  probable  that  in  this  respect  primitive  man  did  but 
continue  the  social  life  of  his  prehuman  ancestors.  But 
what  form  the  primitive  family  had,  and  in  what  way 
more  complex  forms  of  society  were  developed  from  it, 
are  obscure  and  much-disputed  questions.  Hence  any 
attempt  to  show  how  the  human  instincts  played  their 
parts  in  the  process  must  be  purely  speculative.  Never- 
theless it  is  a  legitimate  and  fascinating  subject  for 
speculation,  and  we  may  attempt  to  form  some  notion  of 
the  socialising  influence  of  the  instinct  of  pugnacity 
among  primitive  men  by  adopting  provisionally  one  of 
the  most  ingenious  of  the  speculative  accounts  of  the 
process.  Such  is  the  account  offered  by  Messrs.  Atkin- 
son and  Andrew  Lang,^  which  may  be  briefly  sketched 
as  follows.  The  primitive  society  was  a  polygamous 
family  consisting  of  a  patriarch,  his  wives  and  children. 
The  young  males,  as  they  became  full-grown,  were  driven 
out  of  the  community  by  the  patriarch,  who  was  jealous 
of  all  possible  rivals  to  his  marital  privileges.  They 
formed  semi-independent  bands  hanging,  perhaps,  on  the 
skirts  of  the  family  circle,  from  which  they  were  jeal- 
ously excluded.  From  time  to  time  the  young  males 
would  be  brought  by  their  sex-impulse  into  deadly  strife 
with  the  patriarch,  and,  when  one  of  them  succeeded  in 
overcoming  him,  this  one  would  take  his  place  and  rule 
in  his  stead.  A  social  system  of  this  sort  obtains  among 
some  of  the  animals,  and  it  seems  to  be  just  such  a  system 
as  the  fierce  sexual  jealousy  of  man  and  his  polygamous 
capacities  and  tendencies  would  produce  in  the  absence 
^  "The  Primal  Law." 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY         289 

of  any  modifying  law  or  moral  tradition.  This  prohibi- 
tion enforced  by  the  jealousy  of  the  patriarch  is  the 
primal  lazv,  the  first  example  of  a  general  prohibition  laid 
upon  the  natural  impulse  of  a  class  of  human  beings  and 
upheld  by  superior  force  for  the  regulation  of  social  re- 
lations. 

We  have  seen  in  Chapter  V.  that  jealousy  is  an  emo- 
tion dependent  upon  the  existence  of  a  sentiment. 
Whether  we  have  to  recognise  among  the  constituent 
dispositions  of  the  sentiment  an  instinct  of  acquisition  or 
possession,  is  a  difficult  question  to  which  we  found  it 
impossible  to  give  a  decided  answer.  But,  however,  that 
may  be,  it  is  clear  that  the  principal  constituent  of  the 
emotion  of  male  jealousy,  especially  of  the  crude  kind  ex- 
cited within  the  crude  sentiment  of  attachment  or  owner- 
ship which  the  primitive  patriarch  entertained  for  his 
family,  is  anger ;  in  the  human,  as  well  as  many  other 
species,  the  anger  excited  in  connection  with  the  sexual 
instinct  is  of  the  most  furious  and  destructive  intensity. 
If,  then,  we  accept  this  hypothesis  of  the  "primal  law," 
we  must  believe  that  the  observance  of  this  law  was  en- 
forced by  the  instinct  of  pugnacity. 

Now  an  instinct  that  led  to  furious  and  mortal  com- 
bat between  the  males  of  any  group  might  w^ell  deter- 
mine the  evolution  of  great  strength  and  ferocity  and  of 
various  weapons  and  defensive  modifications  of  struc- 
ture, as  sexual  characters,  in  the  way  that  Darwin  sup- 
posed it  to  have  done  in  many  animal  species.^  But  it 
is  not  at  first  sight  obvious  how  it  should  operate  as  a 
great  socialising  force.  If  we  would  understand  how 
it  may  have  done  so,  we  must  bear  in  mind  the  fact,  so 
strongly  insisted  on  by  Walter  Bagehot  in  his  brilliant 

"The  Descent  of  Man." 


290  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

essay,  "Physics  and  Politics,"  ^  that  the  first  and  most 
momentous  step  of  primitive  men  towards  civilisation 
must  have  been  the  evolution  of  rigid  customs,  the  en- 
forced observance  of  which  disciplined  men  to  the  habit 
of  control  of  the  immediate  impulses.  Bagehot  rightly 
maintained  that  the  achievement  of  this  first  step  of  the 
moral  ladder  must  have  been  a  most  difficult  one;  he 
wrote — "Law,  rigid,  definite,  concise  law  was  the  primary 
want  of  early  mankind;  that  which  they  needed  above 
anything  else,  that  which  was  requisite  before  they 
could  gain  anything  else,"  i.e.  before  they  could  gain  the 
advantages  of  social  co-operation.  Again,  he  wrote :  "In 
early  times  the  quantity  of  government  is  much  more  im- 
portant than  its  quality.  What  is  wanted  is  a  compre- 
hensive rule  binding  m.en  together,  making  them  do  the 
same  things,  telling  them  what  to  expect  of  each  other, 
fashioning  them  alike,  and  keeping  them  so.  What  the 
rule  is  does  not  matter  so  much,  A  good  rule  is  bet- 
ter than  a  bad  one,  but  a  bad  one  is  better  than  none." 
When  Bagehot  goes  on  to  tell  us  how  law  established 
law-abidingness,  or  the  capacity  of  self-control,  in  human 
nature,  his  account  ceases  to  be  satisfactory ;  for  he  wrote 
when  biologists  still  believed  with  Lamarck  and  Dar- 
win and  Spencer  in  the  inheritance  of  acquired  charac- 
ters. That  such  inheritance  is  possible  we  may  no  longer 
assume,  though  very  many  writers  on  social  topics  still 
make  the  assumption,  as  Bagehot  did,  and  still  use  it  as 
the  easy  key  to  all  problems  of  social  evolution.  For 
Bagehot  simply  assumed  that  the  habit  of  self-control 
and  of  obedience  to  law  and  custom,  forcibly  induced 
in  the  members  of  succeeding  generations,  became  an  in- 
nate quality  by  transmission  and  accumulation  from 
generation  to  generation.  While,  then,  we  may  ac- 
*  International    Scientific    Series. 


THE  INSTINCT  OF,  PUGNACITY         291 

cept  Bagehot's  dictum  that  it  is  difficult  to  exaggerate 
the  difference  between  civiHsed  and  primitive  men  {i.e., 
really  primitive  men,  not  the  savages  of  the  present  time) 
in  respect  to  their  innate  law-abidingness,  and  while  we 
may  accept  also  his  view  that  the  strict  enforcement  of 
law  played  a  great  part  in  producing  this  evolution,  we 
cannot  accept  his  view  of  the  mode  of  operation  of  law 
in  producing  this  all-important  change. 

But  the  hypothesis  of  the  "primal  law"  enables  us  to 
conceive  the  first  step  of  the  process  in  a  manner  con- 
sistent with  modern  biological  principles.  For  offence 
against  the  "primal  law"  meant  death  to  the  offender, 
unless  he  proved  himself  more  than  a  match  for  the 
patriarch.  Hence  the  ruthless  pugnacity  of  the  patriarch 
must  have  constantly  weeded  out  the  more  reckless  of 
his  male  progeny,  those  least  capable  of  restraining 
their  sexual  impulse  under  the  threat  of  his  anger.  Fear, 
the  great  inhibitor,  must  have  played  a  great  part  in  in- 
ducing observance  of  the  "primal  law" ;  and  it  might  be 
suggested  that  the  principal  effect  of  the  enforcement 
of  this  law  must  have  been  to  increase  by  selection  the 
power  of  this  restraining  instinct.  But  those  males  who 
failed  to  engage  in  combat  would  never  succeed  in  trans- 
mitting their  too  timorous  natures  to  a  later  generation ; 
for  by  combat  alone  could  the  headship  of  a  family  be 
obtained.  Hence  this  ruthless  selection  among  the  young 
males  must  have  led  to  the  development  of  prudence, 
rather  than  to  the  mere  strengthening  of  the  instinct  of 
fear. 

Now  prudent  control  of  an  impulse  implies  a  muchj 
higher  type  of  mental  organisation,  a  much  greater  de- 
gree of  mental  integration,  than  is  implied  by  the  mere 
inhibition  of  an  impulse  through   fear.     No  doubt  the 
instinct  of  fear  plays  a  part  in  such  prudent  control,  but 


292  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

it  implies  also  a  considerable  degree  of  development  of 
self-consciousness  and  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
and  a  capacity  for  deliberation  and  the  weighing  of  mo- 
tives in  the  light  of  self-consciousness.  If  an  indi- 
vidual has  such  capacities,  a  moderate  strength  of  the 
fear-impulse 'will  suffice  to  restrain  the  sex-impulse  more 
effectively  than  a  very  strong  fear-impulse  operating 
in  a  less-developed  mind.  The  operation  of  the  "primal 
law"  will,  therefore,  have  tended  to  secure  that  the  suc- 
cessful rival  of  the  patriarch  should  have  strong  instincts 
of  sex  and  of  pugnacity  and  a  but  moderately  strong 
fear-instinct,  combined  with  the  more  developed  mental 
organisation  that  permits  of  deliberation  and  of  control 
of  the  stronger  impulses  through  the  organised  co-opera- 
tion of  the  weaker  impulses.  That  is  to  say,  it  was  a 
condition  which  secured  for  the  family  community  a 
succession  of  patriarchs,  each  of  whom  was  superior  to 
his  rivals,  not  merely  in  power  of  combat,  but  also  and 
chiefly  in  power  of  far-sighted  control  of  his  impulses. 
Each  such  patriarch,  becoming  the  father  of  the  succeed- 
ing generation,  will  then  have  transmitted  to  it  in  some 
degree  his  exceptional  power  of  self-control.  In  this  way 
the  "primal  law,"  enforced  by  the  fiercest  passions  of 
primitive  man,  may  have  prepared  human  nature  for  the 
observance  of  laws  less  brutally  and  ruthlessly  enforced, 
may,  in  short,  have  played  a  great  part  in  developing  in 
humanity  that  power  of  self-control  and  law-abidingness 
which  was  the  essential  condition  of  the  progress  of 
social  organisation. 

If  we  consider  human  societies  at  a  later  stage  of 
their  development,  we  shall  see  that  the  pugnacious  in- 
stinct has  played  a  similar  part  there  also.  And  in  this 
case  we  are  not  compelled  to  rely  only  on  speculative 
hypotheses,  but  can  find  inductive  support  for  our  in- 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY         293 

ference  in  a  comparative  study  of  existing  savage  peoples. 

When  in  any  region  social  organisation  had  pro- 
gressed so  far  that  the  mortal  combat  of  individuals 
was  replaced  by  the  mortal  combat  of  tribes,  villages,  or 
groups  of  any  kind,  success  in  combat  and  survival  and 
propagation  must  have  been  favoured  by,  and  have  de- 
pended upon,  not  only  the  vigour  and  ferocity  of  in- 
dividual fighters,  but  also,  and  to  an  even  greater  de- 
gree, upon  the  capacity  of  individuals  for  united  action, 
upon  good  comradeship,  upon  personal  trustworthiness, 
and  upon  the  capacity  of  individuals  to  subordinate  their 
impulsive  tendencies  and  egoistic  promptings  to  the  ends 
of  the  group  and  to  the  commands  of  the  accepted  leader. 
Hence,  wherever  such  mortal  conflict  of  groups  pre- 
vailed for  many  generations,  it  must  have  developed  in 
the  surviving  groups  just  those  social  and  moral  qualities 
of  individuals  which  are  the  essential  conditions  of  all 
effective  co-operation  and  of  the  higher  forms  of  social 
organisation.  For  success  in  war  implies  definite  or- 
ganisation, the  recognition  of  a  leader,  and  faithful  ob- 
servance of  his  commands ;  and  the  obedience  given  to 
the  war-chief  implies  a  far  higher  level  of  morality  than 
is  implied  by  the  mere  observance  of  the  "primal  law"  or 
of  any  other  personal  prohibition  under  the  threat  of 
punishment.  A  leader  whose  followers  were  bound  to 
him  by  fear  of  punishment  only  would  have  no  chance 
of  success  against  a  band  of  which  the  members  were 
bound  together  and  to  their  chief  by  a  true  conscientious- 
ness arising  from  a  more  developed  self-consciousness, 
from  the  identification  of  the  self  with  the  society,  and 
from  a  sensitive  regard  on  the  part  of  each  member  for 
the  opinion  of  his  fellows. 

Such  conflict  of  groups  could  not  fail  to  operate  ef- 
fectively in  developing  the  moral  nature  of  man ;  those 


294  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

communities  in  which  this  higher  morality  wa 
veloped  would  triumph  over  and  exterminate  those  \.  ch 
had  not  attained  it  in  equal  degree.  And  the  more  le 
pugnacious  instinct  impelled  primitive  societies  to  war- 
fare, the  more  rapidly  and  effectively  must  the  funda- 
mental social  attributes  of  men  have  been  developed  in 
the  societies  which  survived  the  ordeal. 

It  is  not  easy  to  analyse  these  moral  qualities  and  to 
say  exactly  what  elements  of  the  mental   constitute 
were  involved  in  this  evolution.     In  part  the  advai  > 
must  have  consisted  in  a  further  improvement  of  t 
kind  we  have  supposed  to  be  effected  by  the  operati 
of  the  "primal  law,"  namely,  a  richer  self-consciousne,- 
and    increased    capacity    for    control    of    the    stronge 
primary  impulses  by  the  co-operation  of  impulses  spring 
ing  from  dispositions  organised  about  the  idea  of  th 
self.     It  may  also  have  involved  a  relative  increase  o 
strength  of  the  more  specifically  social  tendencies,  namely, 
the  gregarious  instinct,  the  instincts  of  self-assertion  and 
subjection,  and  the  primitive  sympathetic  tendency;  the 
increase  of  strength  of  these  tendencies  in  the  members 
of  any  social  group  would  render  them  capable  of  being 
more  strongly  swayed  by  regard  for  the  opinions  and 
feelings  of  their  fellows,  and  so  would  strengthen  the 

..^influence  of  the  public  opinion  of  the  group  upon  each 

^member  of  it. 

These  results  of  group-selection  produced  by  the 
mortal  conflicts  of  small  societies,  and  ultimately  due  to 
the  strength  of  the  pugnacious  instinct,  are  very  clearly 
illustrated  by  the  tribes  of  Borneo.  As  one  travels  up 
any  one  of  the  large  rivers,  one  meets  with  tribes  that 
are  successively  more  warlike.  In  the  coast  regions  are 
peaceful  communities  which  never  fight,  save  in  self- 
defence,  and  then  with  but  poor  success;  while  in  the 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY         295 

gf  regions,  where  the  rivers  take  their  rise,  are  a 
nuiiliaer  of  extremely  warlike  tribes,  whose  raids  have 
bdo  r  a  constant  source  of  terror  to  the  communities 
settled  in  the  lower  reaches  of  the  rivers.  And  between 
tMse  tribes  at  the  centre  and  those  in  the  coast  regions 
are  others  that  serve  as  a  buffer  between  them,  being 
decidedly  more  bellicose  than  the  latter  but  less  so 
than  the  former.  It  might  be  supposed  that  the  peaceful 
i^stwise  people  would  be  found  to  be  superior  in  moral 
ijafllities  to  their  more  warlike  neighbours;  but  the  con- 
odry  is  the  case.  In  almost  all  respects  the  advantage 
a^  with  the  warlike  tribes.  Their  houses  are  better 
,aalt,  larger,  and  cleaner;  their  domestic  morality  is 
tiperior;  they  are  physically  stronger,  are  braver,  and 
-i-hysically  and  mentally  more  active,  and  in  general  are 
3iiore  trustworthy.  But,  above  all,  their  social  organisa- 
ion  is  firmer  and  more  efficient,  because  their  respect 
for  and  obedience  to  their  chiefs,  and  their  loyalty  to 
their  community,  are  much  greater;  each  man  identifies 
himself  with  the  whole  community  and  accepts  and 
loyally  performs  the  social  duties  laid  upon  him.  And 
rjie  moderately  warlike  tribes  occupying  the  intermediate 
i^egions  stand  midway  between  them  and  the  people  of 
the  coast  as  regards  these  moral  qualities.^ 

Yet  all  these  tribes  are  of  closely  allied  racial  stocks, 
and  the  superior  moral  qualities  of  the  central  tribes 
v/ould  seem  to  be  the  direct  result  of  the  very  severe 
group-selection  to  which  their  innate  pugnacity  has  sub- 

*  These  statements  are  based  not  merely  on  my  own  observa- 
tions during  a  sojourn  of  six  months  among  these  tribes,  but 
also  on  the  authority  of  my  friend  Dr.  Charles  Hose,  who  for 
more  than  twenty  years  has  exercised  a  very  remarkable  in- 
fluence over  many  of  the  tribes  of  Sarawak,  and  has  done  very 
much  to  establish  the  beneficent  rule  of  the  Rajah,  H.H.  Sir 
Charles  Brooke,  over  the  wilder  tribes  of  the  outlying  districts. 


296  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

jected  them  for  many  generations.  And  the  greater 
strength  of  their  pugnacious  instinct,  which  displays  it- 
self unmistakably  in  their  more  martial  bearing  and 
mdre  fiery  temper,  is  probably  due-  ultimately  to  the 
more  bVacing  climate  of  the  central  regions,  which,  by 
favouring  a  greater  bodily  activity,  has  led  to  more  fre- 
quent conflicts  and  a  stricter  weeding  out  of  the  more 
inoffensive  and  less  energetic  individuals  and  groups. 

^  Such  tribal  conflict,  which  in  this  remote  region  has 
continued  up  to  the  present  time,  has  probably  played 
in  past  ages  a  great  part  in  preparing  the  civilised  peo- 
ples  of  Europe   for  the  comn^ex   social  life  that  they 

\  have  developed.  Mr.  KidK'  tias  insisted  forcibly  upon 
this  view,  pointing  out  that  the 'tribes  of  the  central  and 
northern  regions  of  Europe,  which  have  played  so  great 
a  part  in  the  later  history  of  civilisation,  were  sub- 
jected for  long  ages  to  a  process  of  military  group- 
selection  which  was  probably  of  extreme  severity,  and 
which  rendered  them,  at  the  time  they  first  appear  in  his- 
tory, the  most  pugnacious  and  terrible  warriors  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen.^  This  process  must  riave  de- 
veloped not  only  the  individual  fighting  qualities,  but 
also  the  qualities  that  make  for  conscientious"  conduct 
and  stable  and  efficient  social  organisation.  These  ef- 
fects were  clearly  marked  in  the  barbarians  who  over- 
ran the  Roman  Empire.  The  Germanic  tribes  were 
perhaps  more  pugnacious  and  possessed  of  the  military 
virtues  in  a  higher  degree  than  any  other  people  that 
has  existed  before  or  since.    They  were  the  most  terrible 

*  "Principles  of  Western  Civilisation,"  p.  156:  "The  ruling 
fact  which  stands  clearly  out  in  regarding  this  movement  of 
peoples  as  a  whole,  is  that  it  must  have  represented  a  process 
of  military  selection,  probably  the  most  sustained,  prolonged, 
and  culminating  in  character  that  the  race  has  ever  undergone." 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY         297 

enemies,  as  Julius  Caesar  found ;  they  could  never  be  sub- 
dued because  they  fought,  not  merely  to  gain  any  specific 
ends,  but  because  they  loved  fighting,  i.e.,  because  they 
were  innately  pugnacious.  Their  religion  and  the  cbr  r- 
acter  of  their  gods  reflected  their  devotion  .  j  war; 
centuries  of  Christianity  have  failed  to  eradicate  this 
quality,  and  the  smallest  differences  of  opinion  and  be- 
lief continue  to  furnish  the  pretexts  for  fresh  combats. 
Mr.  Kidd  argues  strongly  that  it  is  the  social  qualities 
developed  by  this  process  of  military  group-selection 
which,  more  than  anything  else,  have  enabled  these  peo- 
ples to  build  up  a  new  civilisation  on  the  ruins  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  to  c.  on  the  progress  of  social 
organisation  and  of  civilisation  to  the  point  it  has  now 
reached. 

These  important  social  effects  of  the  pugnacious  in- 
stinct seem  to  be  forcibly  illustrated  by  a  comparison 
of  the  peoples  of  Europe  with  those  of  India  and  of 
China,  two  areas  comparable  with  it  in  extent,  in  density 
of  settled  population,  and  in  age  of  civilisation.  In 
neither  c  these  areas  has  there  been  a  similar  perennial 
conflict  of  societies.  In  both  of  them,  the  mass  of  the 
people  has  been  subjected  for  long  ages  to  the  rule  of 
dominant  castes  which  have  established  themselves  in 
successive  invasions  from  the  central  plateau  of  Asia, 
that  great  breeding-ground  of  warlike  nomadic  hordes. 
The  result  in  both  cases  is  the  same.  The  bulk  of  the 
people  are  deficient  in  the  pugnacious  instinct;  they  are 
patient  and  long  suffering,  have  no  taste  for  war,  and, 
in  China  especially,  they  despise  the  military  virtues. 
At  the  same  time  they  seem  to  be  deficient  in  those 
social  qualities  which  may  be  summed  up  under  the  one 
word  "conscientiousness,"  and  which  are  the  cement 
of  societies  and  essential  factors  of  their  progressive 


298  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

integration.  Accordingly,  in  the  societies  formed  by  these 
peoples,  the  parts  hang  but  loosely  together — they  are  but 
partially  integrated  and  loosely  organised.  Among  these 
peoples  Buddhism,  the  religion  of  peace,  found  a  con- 
genial home,  and  its  precepts  have  governed  the  practice 
of  great  masses  of  men  in  a  very  real  manner,  v^^hich 
contrasts  strongly  with  the  formal  acceptance  and  prac- 
tical neglect  of  the  peaceful  precepts  of  their  religion 
that  has  always  characterised  the  Christian  peoples  of 
Western  Europe. 

In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
Japanese  with  the  Chinese  people.  Whether  the  strain 
of  Malayan  blood  in  the  Japanese  has  endowed  them 
from  the  first  with  a  stronger  instinct  of  pugnacity  than 
their  cousins  the  Chinese,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But 
it  is  certain  that  the  people,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
have  long  recognised  in  their  Emperor  a  common 
spiritual  head  of  the  empire,  have  been  until  very  recently 
divided  into  numerous  clans  that  have  been  almost  con- 
stantly at  war  with  one  another,  society  being  organised 
on  a  military  system  not  unlike  that  of  feudal  Europe. 
Hence  the  profession  of  the  soldier  has  continued  to  be 
held  in  the  highest  honour,  and  the  fighting  qualities,  as 
well  as  the  specifically  social  qualities  of  the  people,  have 
been  brought  to  a  very   high   level. 

In  Japan  also  Buddhism  has  long  been  firmly  estab- 
lished ;  but,  as  with  Christianity  in  Europe,  its  preaching 
of  peace  has  never  been  practically  accepted  by  the  mass 
of  the  people ;  the  old  ancestor-worship  has  continued  to 
flourish  side  by  side  with  it,  and  now,  on  the  accentua- 
tion of  the  warlike  spirit  induced  by  contact  with  the 
outside  world,  seems  to  be  pushing  the  religion  of  peace 
into  the  background. 

In  addition  to  this  important  role  in  the  evolution  of 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  299 

the  moral  qualities,  the  pugnacious  instinct  has  exerted 
a  more  direct  and  hardly  less  important  influence  in  the 
life  of  societies. 

We  have  seen  how  this  instinct  is  operative  in  the 
emotion   of   revenge  and  in  moral  indignation.     These  I 
two  emotions  have  played  leading  parts  in  the  growth  / 
and  maintenance  of  every  system  of  criminal  law  and] 
every  code  of  punishment;  for,  however  widely  authors* 
may  differ  as  to  the  spirit  in  which  punishment  should 
be   administered,   there   can   be   no    doubt   that   it   was 
originally  retributive,  and  that  it  still  retains  something 
of  this  character  even  in  the  most  highly  civilised  so- 
cieties.    The  administration  of  criminal  law  is  then  the 
organised   and    regulated   expression   of    the    anger    of 
society,   modified  and   softened   in   various   degrees  by 
the  desire  that  punishment  may  reform  the  wrong-doer 
and  deter  others  from  similar  actions. 

Though  with  the  progress  of  civilisation  the  public 
administration  of  justice  has  encroached  more  and  more 
on  the  sphere  of  operation  of  the  anger  of  individuals 
as  a  power  restraining  ofifences  of  all  kinds,  yet,  in  the 
matter  of  offences  against  the  person,  individual  anger 
remains  as  a  latent  threat  whose  influence  is  by  no 
means  negligible  in  the  regulation  of  manners,  as  we  see 
most  clearly  in  those  countries  in  which  the  practice  of 
duelling  is  not  yet  obsolete.  And  in  the  nursery  and  the 
school  righteous  anger  will  always  have  a  great  and 
proper  part  to  play  in  the  training  of  the  individual  for 
his  life  in  society. 

It  was  suggested  in  Chapter  IV.  that  emulation  is 
rooted  in  an  instinct  which  was  evolved  in  the  human 
mind  by  a  process  of  differentiation  from  the  instinct  of 
pugnacity.  However  that  may  be,  it  seems  clear  that 
this  impulse  is  distinct  from  both  the  combative  and 


300  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  self-assertive  impulses;  and  just  as,  according  to  our 
supposition,  the  emulative  impulse  has  acquired  in  the 
course  of  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind  an  increas- 
ing importance,  so  in  the  life  of  societies  it  tends  grad- 
ually to  take  the  place  of  the  instinct  of  pugnacity,  as  a 
force  making  for  the  development  of  social  life  and  or- 
ganisation. 

It  is  among  the  peoples  of  Western  Europe,  who,  as 
we  have  seen,  have  been  moulded  by  a  prolonged  and 
severe  process  of  military  selection,  that  the  emulative 
impulse  is  most  active.  With  us  it  supplies  the  zest 
and  determines  the  forms  of  almost  all  our  games  and 
recreations ;  and  Professor  James  is  guilty  of  picturesque 
exaggeration  only,  when  he  says  "nine-tenths  of  the  work 
of  our  world  is  done  by  it."  Our  educational  system  is 
founded  upon  it;  it  is  the  social  force  underlying  an 
immense  amount  of  strenuous  exertion ;  to  it  we  owe  in  a 
great  measure  even  our  science,  our  literature,  and  our 
art;  for  it  is  a  strong,  perhaps  an  essential,  element  of 
ambition,  that  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds,  in  which  it 
operates  through,  and  under  the  direction  of,  a  highly 
developed  social  self-consciousness. 

The  emulative  impulse  tends  to  assert  itself  in  an  ever- 
widening  sphere  of  social  life,  encroaching  more  and 
more  upon  the  sphere  of  the  combative  impulse,  and  sup- 
planting it  more  and  more  as  a  prime  mover  of  both 
individuals  and  societies.  This  tendency  brings  with  it 
a  very  important  change  in  the  conditions  of  social  evo- 
lution. While  the  combative  impulse  leads  to  the  de- 
struction of  the  individuals  and  societies  that  are  least 
capable  of  self-defence,  the  errtulative  impulse  does  not 
directly  lead  to  the  extermination  of  individuals  or  so- 
cieties.   It  is,  rather,  compatible  with  a  tender  solicitude 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  301 

for  their  continued  existence ;  the  millionaire,  who, 
prompted  by  this  impulse,  has  succeeded  in  appropriating 
a  proportion  of  the  wealth  of  the  community  vastly  in 
excess  of  his  deserts,  may  spend  a  part  of  it  on  free  li- 
braries, hospitals,  or  soup-kitchens.  In  fact,  the  natural 
tendency  of  the  emulative  impulse  is  to  preserve,  rather 
than  to  destroy,  defeated  competitors ;  for  their  regards 
bring  a  fuller  satisfaction  to  the  impulse,  and  the  exploi- 
tation of  their  labour  by  the  successful  rival  is  the  nat- 
ural issue  of  competition.  Therefore,  as  emulation  re- 
places pugnacity  within  any  society,  it  tends  to  put  a 
stop  to  natural  selection  of  individuals  within  that  so- 
ciety ;  so  that  the  evolution  of  human  nature  becomes 
increasingly  dependent  on  group-selection.  And,  if  inter- 
national emulation  should  completely  supplant  interna- 
tional pugnacity,  group-selection  also  will  be  rendered 
very  much  less  effective.  To  this  stage  the  most  highly 
civilised  communities  are  tending,  in  accordance  with  the 
law  that  the  collective  mind  follows  in  the  steps  of  evolu- 
tion of  the  individual  mind  at  a  great  interval  of  time. 
There  are  unmistakable  signs  that  the  pugnacity  of  na- 
tions is  being  supplanted  by  emulation,  that  warfare  is 
being  replaced  by  industrial  and  intellectual  rivalry ;  that 
wars  between  civilised  nations,  which  are  replacing  the 
mortal  conflicts  between  individuals  and  between  socie- 
ties dominated  by  the  spirit  of  pugnacity,  are  tending  to 
become  mere  incidents  of  their  commercial  and  industrial 
rivalry,  being  undertaken  to  secure  markets  or  sources 
of  supply  of  raw  material  which  shall  bring  industrial  or 
commercial  advantage  to  their  possessor. 

The  tendency  of  emulation  to  replace  pugnacity  is, 
then,  a  tendency  to  bring  to  an  end  what  has  been  an 
important,  probably  the  most  important,  factor  of  pro- 


302  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

gressive  evolution  of  human  nature,  namely,  the  selection 
of  the  fit  and  the  extermination  of  the  less  fit  (among 
both  individuals  and  societies)  resulting  from  their  con- 
flicts with  one  another,^ 

*The  attempt  now  being  made  to  found  a  science  and  an  art 
of   Eugenics   owes  its  importance  largely  to  this  tendency. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT 


IT  was  pointed  out  in  Chapter  III.  thai  the  gregarious 
instinct  plays  a  great  part  in  determining  the  forms 
of  our  recreations ;  and  in  Chapter  VI.  it  was  shown! 
how,  in  co-operation  with  the  primitive  sympathetic  ten] 
dency,  it  leads  men  to  seek  to  share  their  emotions  with} 
the  largest  possible  number  of  their  fellows.  Besides' 
determining  the  forms  of  recreations,  this  instinct  plays 
a  much  more  serious  part  in  the  life  of  civihsed  societies. 
It  is  sometimes  assumed  that  the  monstrous  and  disas- 
trous growth  of  London  and  of  other  large  towns  is  the 
result  of  some  obscure  economic  necessity.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  London  and  many  other  large  towns 
have  for  a  long  time  past  far  exceeded  the  proportions 
that  conduce  to  economic  efficiency  and  healthy  social 
life,  just  as  the  vast  herds  of  bison,  or  other  animals, 
referred  to  in  Chapter  III.,  greatly  exceed  the  size  neces- 
sary for  mutual  defence.  We  are  often  told  that  the  dul- 
ness  of  the  country  drives  the  people  to  the  towns.  But 
that  statement  inverts  the  truth.  It  is  the  crowd  in  the 
towns,  the  vast  human  herd,  that  exerts  a  baneful  attrac- 
tion on  those  outside  it.  People  have  lived  in  the  coun- 
try for  hundreds  of  generations  without  finding  it  dull. 
It  is  only  the  existence  of  the  crowded  towns  that  creates 
by  contrast  the  dulness  of  the  country.  As  in  the  case  of 
the  animals,  the  larger  the  aggregation  the  greater  is  its 
power  of  attraction ;  hence,  in  spite  of  high  rents,  high 

303 


304  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

rates,  dirt,  disease,  congestion  of  traffic,  ugliness,  squalor, 
and  sooty  air,  the  large  towns  continue  to  grow  at  an 
increasing  rate,  while  the  small  towns  diminish  and  the 
country  villages  are  threatened  with  extinction. 

That  this  herding  in  the  towns  is  not  due  to  any 
economic  necessities  of  our  industrial  organisation,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  it  takes  place  to  an  equally  great 
and  regrettable  extent  in  countries  where  the  industrial 
conditions  are  very  different.  In  Australia,  where  every- 
thing favours  an  agricultural  or  pastoral  mode  of  life, 
half  the  population  of  a  continent  is  crowded  into  a  few 
towns  on  the  coast.  In  China,  where  industry  persists 
almost  entirely  in  the  form  of  handicrafts  and  where 
economic  conditions  are  extremely  different  from  our 
own,  we  find  towns  like  Canton  containing  three  million 
inhabitants  crowded  together  even  more  densely  than  in 
London  and  under  conditions  no  less  repulsive. 

In  England  we  must  attribute  this  tendency  chiefly  to 
the  fact  that  the  spread  of  elementary  education  and  the 
freer  intercourse  between  the  people  of  the  different 
parts  of  the  country  have  broken  down  the  bonds  of  cus- 
tom which  formerly  kept  each  man  to  the  place  and  call- 
ing of  his  forefathers ;  for  custom,  the  great  conservative 
force  of  society,  the  great  controller  of  the  individual 
impulses,  being  weakened,  the  deep-seated  instincts,  espe- 
cially the  gregarious  instinct,  have  found  their  oppor- 
tunity to  determine  the  choices  of  men.  Other  causes 
have,  of  course,  co-operated  and  have  facilitated  the  ag- 
gregations of  population ;  but  without  the  instinctive 
basis  they  would  probably  have  produced  only  slight  ef- 
fects of  this  kind. 

The  administrative  authorities  have  shown  of  late 
years  a  disposition  to  encourage  in  every  possible  way 
this  gregarious  tendency.    On  the  slightest  occasion  they 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT  305 

organise  some  show  which  shall  draw  huge  crowds  to 
gape,  until  now  a  new  street  cannot  be  opened  without 
the  expenditure  of  thousands  of  pounds  in  tawdry  deco- 
rations, and  a  foreign  prince  cannot  drive  to  a  railway- 
station  without  drawing  many  thousands  of  people  from 
their  work  to  spend  the  day  in  worse  than  useless  idle- 
ness, confirming  their  already  over-developed  gregarious 
instincts.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  excessive  in- 
dulgence of  this  impulse  is  one  of  the  greatest  demor- 
alising factors  of  the  present  time  in  this  country,  just 
as  it  was  in  Rome  in  the  days  of  her  declining  power 
and  glory. 

In  this  connection  we  may  briefly  consider  the  views  of 
Professor  Giddings  ^  on  "the  consciousness  of  kind," 
which  he  would  have  us  regard  as  the  basic  principle  of 
social  organisation.  He  writes,  "In  its  widest  extension 
the  consciousness  of  kind  marks  off  the  animate  from 
the  inanimate.  Within  the  wide  class  of  the  animals 
it  marks  off  species  and  races.  Within  racial  lines  the 
consciousness  of  kind  underlies  the  more  definite  ethnical 
and  political  groupings,  it  is  the  basis  of  class  distinc- 
tions, of  innumerable  forms  of  alliance,  of  rules  of  inter- 
course, and  of  peculiarities  of  policy.  Our  conduct  to- 
wards those  whom  we  feel  to  be  most  like  ourselves  is; 
instinctively  and  rationally  different  from  our  conductl 
towards  others,  whom  we  believe  to  be  less  like  ourselves,' 
Again,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  kind,  and  nothing  else, 
which  distinguishes  social  conduct,  as  such,  from  purely 
economic,  purely  political,  or  purely  religious  conduct ; 
for  in  actual  life  it  constantly  interferes  with  the  theo- 
retically perfect  operation  of  the  economic,  political,  or 
religious  motive.  The  working  man  joins  a  strike  of 
which  he  does  not  approve  rather  than  cut  himself  off 

*  "Principles  of  Sociology,"  p.  18  (my  quotation  is  abridged). 


3o6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

from  his  fellows.  For  a  similar  reason  the  manufacturer 
who  questions  the  value  of  protection  to  his  own  in- 
dustry yet  pays  his  contribution  to  the  protectionist  cam- 
paign fund.  The  Southern  gentleman,  who  believed  in 
the  cause  of  the  Union,  none  the  less  threw  in  his  for- 
tunes with  the  Confederacy,  if  he  felt  himself  to  be  one 
of  the  Southern  people  and  a  stranger  to  the  people  of 
the  North.  The  liberalising  of  creeds  is  accomplished  by 
the  eflforts  of  men  who  are  no  longer  able  to  accept  the 
traditional  dogma,  but  who  desire  to  maintain  associa- 
tions which  it  would  be  painful  to  sever.  In  a  word,  it  is 
about  the  consciousness  of  kind  that  all  other  motives 
organise  themselves  in  the  evolution  of  social  choice, 
social  volition,  or  social  policy." 

All  that  attraction  of  like  to  like,  which  Giddings  here 
attributes  to  the  "consciousness  of  kind"  is,  I  think,  to  be 
regarded  as  the  work  of  the  gregarious  impulse,  operat- 
ing at  a  high  level  of  mental  life  in  conjunction  with 
other  impulses.  That  "consciousness  of  kind,"  the  rec- 
ognition of  degrees  of  likeness  of  others  to  one's  self, 
underlies  all  such  cases  as  Professor  Giddings  mentions, 
and  is  presupposed  by  all  social  life,  is  true  only  if  we 
use  the  words  in  a  very  loose  sense.  If  we  would  state 
more  accurately  the  facts  vaguely  implied  by  this  phrase, 
we  must  say  that  the  gregarious  impulse  of  any  animal 
receives  satisfaction  only  through  the  presence  of  ani- 
mals similar  to  itself,  and  the  closer  the  similarity  the 
greater  is  the  satisfaction.  The  impulse  of  this  instinct 
will  bring  and  keep  together  in  one  herd  animals  of  dif- 
ferent species,  as  when  we  see  horses  and  bullocks  graz- 
ing together,  or  birds  of  several  species  in  one  flock ; 
but  it  brings  and  keeps  together  much  more  powerfully 
animals  of  one  species.  Just  so,  in  any  human  being 
the  instinct  operates  most  powerfully  in  relation  to,  and 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT  307 

receives  the  highest  degree  of  satisfaction  from  the  pres- 
ence of,  the  human  beings  who  most  closely  resemble  that 
individual,  those  who  behave  in  like  manner  and  respond 
to  the  same  situations  with  similar  emotions.  An  ex- 
plicit "consciousness  of  kind"  in  any  literal  sense  of  the 
words  imphes  a  relatively  high  level  of  mental  develop- 
ment and  a  developed  self-consciousness,  and  this  is  by 
no  means  necessary  to  the  operation  of  the  gregarious 
instinct.  And  such  "consciousness  of  kind"  can  of  itself 
do  nothing,  it  is  not  a  social  force,  is  not  a  motive,  can 
of  itself  generate  no  impulse  or  desire.  It  is  merely  one 
of  the  most  highly  developed  of  the  cognitive  processes 
through  which  the  gregarious  instinct  may  be  brought 
into  play.  If  this  instinct  were  lacking  to  men,  the  most 
accurate  recognition  of  personal  likenesses  and  differ- 
ences would  fail  to  produce  the  effects  attributed  to  "con- 
sciousness of  kind." 

It  is  because  we  are  not  equally  attracted  by  all  social 
aggregations,  but  find  the  greatest  satisfaction  of  the 
gregarious  impulse  in  the  society  of  those  most  like 
ourselves,  that  a  segregation  of  like  elements  occurs  in 
all  communities.  Among  uncivilised  people  we  usually 
find  communities  of  the  same  tribe,  and  tribes  closely 
allied  by  blood,  occupying  contiguous  areas;  and  the 
effects  of  this  tendency  persist  in  the  civilised  countries 
of  the  present  day  in  the  form  of  local  differences  of 
physical  and  mental  characters  of  the  populations  of  the 
various  counties  or  other  large  areas. 

The  same  tendency  is  illustrated  by  the  formation  in 
the  United  States  of  America  of  large,  locally  circum- 
scribed communities  of  various  European  extractions; 
and  in  our  large  towns  it  manifests  itself  in  the  segrega- 
tion of  people  of  similar  race  and  occupation  and  social 
status,  a  process  which   results  in  striking  differences 


3o8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

between  the  various  districts  or  quarters  of  the  town, 
and  striking  uniformities  within  the  Hmits  of  any  one 
such  quarter.  In  this  tendency  we  may  find  also  an 
explanation  of  the  curious  fact  that  the  traders  dealing 
in  each  kind  of  object  are  commonly  found  closely 
grouped  in  one  street  or  in  neighbouring  streets — the 
coach-builders  in  Long  Acre,  the  newsvendors  in  Fleet 
Street,  the  doctors  in  Harley  Street,  the  shipping  offices 
in  Leadenhall  Street,  and  so  on.  This  segregation  of 
like  trades,  which  might  seem  to  be  a  curious  economic 
.  amomaly  under  our  competitive  system,  is  not  peculiar  to 
European  towns.  It  forced  itself  upon  my  attention  in 
the  streets  of  Canton,  where  it  obtains  in  a  striking  de- 
gree, and  also  in  several  Indian  towns. 

We  may  briefly  sum  up  the  social  operation  of  the 

\  gregarious  instinct  by  saying  that,  in  early  times  when 
population  was  scanty,  it  must  have  played  an  impor- 
tant part  in  social  evolution  by  keeping  men  together 
and  thereby  occasioning  the  need  for  social  laws  and 
institutions ;  as  well  as  by  providing  the  conditions  of 
aggregation  in  which  alone  the  higher  evolution  of  the 
social  attributes  was  possible ;  but  that  in  highly  civilised 
societies  its  functions  are  less  important,  because  the 
density  of  population  ensures  a  sufficient  aggregation  of 
the  people;  and  that,  facilities  for  aggregation  being  so 
greatly  increased  among  modern  nations,  its  direct  oper- 

l  ation  is  apt  to  produce  anomalous  and  even  injurious 
social  results. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  INSTINCTS  THROUGH   WHICH  RELIGIOUS  CONCEPTIONS 
AFFECT  SOCIAL  LIFE 

MANY  authors  have  written  of  the  reHgious  instinct 
or  instincts,  though  few  have  made  any  serious 
attempt  to  make  clear  the  meaning  they  attach  to  these 
phrases.^    Those  who  use  these  phrases  usually  seem  to 
imply  that  this  assumed  religious  instinct  of  man  is  one 
that  is  his  peculiar  endowment  and  has  no  relation  to 
the  instincts  of  tlie  animals.    But  I  do  not  know  that  this 
is  now  seriously  maintained  by  any  psychologist.     The 
emotions  that  play  a  principal  part  in  religious  life  are. 
admiration,  awe,  and  reverence.    In  Chapter  V.  we  haval 
analysed  these  emotions  and  found  that  admiration  is  a|, 
fusion  of  wonder  and  negative  self-feeling;  that  awe  iaj 
a  fusion  of  admiration  with  fear;  and  that  reverence  isy 
awe  blended  with  tender  emotion. 

Religion  has  powerfully  influenced  social  development 
in  so  many  ways,  and  the  primary  emotions  and  im- 
pulses through  which  the  religious  conceptions  have  ex- 
erted this  influence  have  co-operated  so  intimately,  that 

^  Thus  Professor  M.  Jastrow  writes :  "The  certainty  that  the 
religious  instinct  is,  so  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  innate  in  man, 
suffices  as  a  starting-point  for  a  satisfactory  classification."  The 
same  author  tells  us  that  "the  definite  assumption  of  a  religious 
instinct  in  man  forms  part  of  almost  every  definition  of  religion 
proposed  since  the  appearance  of  Schleiermacher's  discourses" 
("The  Study  of  Religion,"  pp.  loi  and  153). 

309 


3IO  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

they  must  be  considered  together  when  we  attempt  to 
illustrate  their  role  in  social  life. 

Something  Has  already  been  said  of  the  role  of  fear 
in  the  chapter  treating  of  pugnacity.  Whether  or  no  the 
hypothesis  of  the  "primal  law"  be  well  founded,  fear 
must  have  played  in  primitive  societies  some  such  part 
as  was  assigned  to  it  in  discussing  that  doctrine.*  That 
is  to  say,  fear  of  physical  punishment  inflicted  by  the 
anger  of  his  fellows  must  have  been  the  great  agent  of 
discipline  of  primitive  man ;  through  such  fear  he  must 
first  have  learnt  to  control  and  regulate  his  impulses  in 
conformity  with  the  needs  of  social  life. 

But,  at  an  early  stage  of  social  development,  awe  must 
have  supplemented  and  in  part  supplanted  simple  fear 
in  this  role.  For,  as  with  the  development  of  language 
man  became  capable  of  a  fuller  life  of  ideas,  the  instinct 
of  curiosity,  which  in  the  animals  merely  serves  to  rivet 
their  attention  upon  unfamiliar  objects,  must  have  been 
frequently  excited  by  the  display  of  forces  that  in 
creatures  of  a  lower  level  of  development  excite  fear 
only.  This  instinct  must  then  have  kept  his  thoughts  at 
work  upon  these  objects  of  his  wonder,  and  especially 
upon  those  which  excited  not  only  wonder  but  fear. 
These  must  have  become  the  objects  of  man's  awful  con- 
templation, and  he  began  to  evolve  theories  to  account 
for  them,  theories  of  which,  no  doubt,  he  felt  the  need  as 
guides  to  action  in  the  presence  of  these  forces. 

We  may  assume  that  primitive  man  lacked  almost  com- 
pletely the  conception  of  mechanical  causation.  For  the 
mlodern  savage  mechanical  causation  is  the  explanation 
of  but  a  small  part  of  the  natural  processes  which  interest 
him  through  affecting  his  welfare  for  good  or  ill.  For 
those  of  us  who  have  grown  up  familiar  with  the  modern 

*  P.  288. 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      311 

doctrine  of  the  prevalence  of  mechanical  causation 
throughout  the  material  world,  it  is  difficult  to  realise  how 
enormous  is  the  distortion  of  the  facts  of  immediate  ex- 
perience wrought  by  that  doctrine,  by  how  great  an  effort 
of  abstraction  it  has  been  reached.  The  savage  is  familiar 
with  the  sequence  of  movement  upon  impact,  but  such  se- 
quences are  far  from  invariable  in  his  experience,  and 
constitute  but  a  very  small  proportion  of  the  events  which 
interest  him.  The  fall  of  bodies  to  the  ground,  the  flow- 
ing of  water,  the  blowing  of  the  wind,  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  the  growth  and  movements  of  animals 
and  plants,  thunder,  lightning,  rain,  fire,  and  the  emis- 
sion and  reflection  of  light  and  heat — these  are  promi- 
nent among  the  things  that  interest  him,  and  in  none  of 
them  is  there  any  obvious  indication  of  mechanical 
operation.  The  one  kind  of  causation  with  which  the 
uncultured  man  is  thoroughly  familiar  is  his  own  voli- 
tional action,  issuing  from  feeling,  emotion,  and  desire; 
and  this  naturally  and  inevitably  becomes  for  him  the 
type  on  which  he  models  his  theories  of  the  causation  of 
terrible  events.  Here  we  touch  the  fringe  of  an  im- 
mense subject,  the  evolution  of  religious  conceptions, 
which  we  cannot  pursue.  It  must  suffice  to  say  that 
Professor  Tylor's  doctrine  of  animism,  as  set  forth  in  his 
great  work  on  "Primitive  Culture,"  is  probably  the  best 
account  we  yet  have  of  the  early  steps  of  this  evolution. 
Let  us  note  merely  that  in  all  probability  primitive  man, 
like  ourselves,  was  apt  to  accept  without  wonder,  with- 
out pondering  and  reasoning  upon  them  the  beneficent 
processes  of  nature,  the  gentle  rain,  the  light  and  warmth 
of  the  sun,  the  flowing  of  the  river,  the  heahhy  growth 
of  animal  and  vegetable  hfe;  but  that  his  wonder  was 
especially  aroused  by  those  things  and  events  which 
excited  also  his  fear,  by  disease  and  death,  pestilence 


312  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  famine,  storm  and  flood,  lightning  and  thunder,  and 
the  powerful  beasts  of  prey.  For,  while  the  beneficent 
processes  are  regular,  gentle,  and  familiar,  these  others 
are  apt  to  come  suddenly,  irregularly,  and  apparently 
capriciously,  and  are  therefore  unfamiliar  and  startling, 
as  well  as  hurtful  and  irresistible.  On  such  objects  and 
events,  then,  man's  wondering  thoughts  were  concen- 
trated, about  them  his  imagination  chiefly  played.  Hence 
it  followed  that  the  powers  which  his  imagination  created 
for  the  explanation  of  these  events  were  conceived  by  him 
more  or  less  vaguely  as  terrible  powers  ready  at  every 
moment  to  bring  disaster  upon  him  and  his  community. 
Therefore  he  walked  in  fear  and  trembling,  and  was 
deeply  concerned  to  learn  how  to  avoid  giving  offence  to 
these  mysterious  and  fearful  powers.  And,  as  soon  as 
these  powers  began  to  be  conceived  by  man  as  personal 
powers,  they  must  have  evoked  in  him  the  attitude  and 
impulse  of  subjection  and  the  emotion  of  negative  self- 
feeling,  which  are  rooted  in  the  instinct  of  subjection.  Or 
perhaps  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that,  as  man  began  to 
form  conceptions  of  these  forces  of  nature,  they  evoked 
in  him  the  impulse  and  emotion  of  this  instinct,  threw  him 
into  the  submissive  attitude  characteristic  of  this  instinct, 
which  is  essentially  a  personal  attitude,  one  implying  a 
personal  relation ;  and  that  primitive  man,  finding  him- 
self in  this  attitude  before  these  powers,  was  thus  led 
to  personify  them,  to  attribute  to  them  the  personal  at- 
tributes of  strength  and  anger,  which  are  the  normal  and 
primitive  excitants  of  this  instinct.  Hence  his  emotion 
took  the  complex  form  of  awe  (a  tertiary  compound  of 
fear,  wonder,  and  negative  self-feeling^)  ;  that  is,  he 
not  only  feared,  and  wondered  at,  these  powers,  but 
'  Cf.  p  135. 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      313 

humbled  himself  before  them,  and  sought  to  gain  and 
to  obey  the  slightest  indications  of  their  wills.^ 

It  is  obvious  that  conceptions  of  this  sort,  once  achieved 
and  accepted  by  all  members  of  a  community  with  un- 
questioning belief,  must  have  been  very  powerful 
agencies  of  social  discipline.  The  cause  of  every 
calamity,  befalling  either  the  individual  or  the  community, 
would  be  sought  in  some  offence  given  to  the  beings  thus 
vaguely  conceived ;  and  primitive  man  would  be  apt  to 
regard  as  the  source  of  offence  any  action  at  all  unusual, 
at  all  out  of  the  ordinary,  whether  of  individuals  or  of  the 

^  Certain  of  these  forces  of  nature  were  less  terrible  than 
others,  e.g.,  rain,  and  the  growth  of  plants  and  animals,  and  man 
made  the  bold  experiment  of  attempting  to  control  them,  pro- 
ceeding by  a  purely  empirical  method  and  guided  by  the  slightest 
indications  to  belief  in  the  success  of  his  experiments ;  such 
seemingly  successful  procedures  then  became  conventional  and 
recognised  modes  of  influencing  these  powers.  In  so  far  as 
man  seemed  to  find  himself  able  to  control  and  coerce  any  of 
these  forces,  his  attitude  and  emotion  in  presence  of  them  would 
be  those  of  the  instinct  of  self-assertion,  even  though  he  might 
continue  to  be  filled  with  fear  and  wonder.  This  complex  emo- 
tional state  seems  to  be  the  characteristically  superstitious  one, 
and  the  attitude  and  practices  are  those  of  magic.  I  suggest 
that  the  fundamental  distinction  between  religious  and  magical 
practices  is  not,  as  is  sometimes  said,  that  religion  conceives 
the  powers  it  envisages  as  personal  powers,  while  magic  conceives 
them  as  impersonal ;  but  rather  that  the  religious  attitude  is 
always  that  of  submission,  the  magical  attitude  that  of  self- 
assertion;  and  that  the  forces  which  both  magical  and  religious 
practices  are  concerned  to  influence  may  be  conceived  in  either 
case  as  personal  or  impersonal  powers.  Hence  the  savage,  who 
at  one  time  bows  down  before  his  fetish  in  supplication,  and 
at  another  seeks  to  compel  its  assistance  by  threats  or  spells, 
adopts  toward  the  one  object  alternately  the  religious  and 
the  magical  attitude.  The  same  fundamental  difference  of 
attitude  and  emotion  distinguishes  religion  from  science,  into 
which  magic  becomes  transformed  as  civilisation  progresses. 


314  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

community.  Hence  the  conceptions  of  these  awe-in- 
spiring beings  would  lead  to  increased  severity  of  social 
discipline  in  two  ways :  firstly,  by  causing  society  to  en- 
force its  customary  laws  more  rigidly  than  was  the  rule 
so  long  as  breaches  of  the  law  were  regarded  as  merely 
natural  offences  against  members  of  the  community ;  for 
the  breaking  of  custom  by  any  individual  was  now  be- 
lieved to  bring  grave  risks  to  the  whole  community,  which 
therefore  was  collectively  concerned  to  prevent  and  to 
punish  any  such  breach:  secondly,  by  producing  a  very 
great  increase  in  the  number  and  kinds  of  customary 
prohibitions  and  enforced  observances;  for  post  hoc  ergo 
propter  hoc  is  the  logic  of  uncultured  man,  and  every 
unusual  act  followed  by  success  or  disaster  must  have 
tended  to  become  a  customary  observance  or  the  sub- 
ject of  a  social  prohibition. 

Thus  these  conceptions  of  supernal  powers,  the  prod- 
ucts of  man's  creative  imagination  working  through, 
and  under  the  driving  power  of,  the  instincts  of  fear, 
curiosity,  and  subjection,  became  the  great  generators 
and  supporters  of  custom.  The  importance  of  the  social 
operation  of  these  instincts  was,  then,  very  great;  for 
the  first  requisite  of  society,  the  prime  condition  of  the 
social  life  of  man,  was,  in  the  words  of  Bagehot,  a  hard 
crust  or  cake  of  custom.  In  the  struggle  for  existence 
only  those  societies  survived  which  were  able  to  evolve 
such  a  hard  crust  of  custom,  binding  men  together,  as- 
similating their  actions  to  the  accepted  standards,  com- 
pelling control  of  the  purely  egoistic  impulses,  and  ex- 
terminating the  individuals  incapable  of  such  control. 

We  see  the  same  result  among  all  savage  communities 
still  existing  on  the  earth,  and  among  all  the  peoples  of 
whom  we  have  any  record  at  the  dawn  of  civilisation. 
Their  actions,  whether  individual  or  collective,  are  ham- 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      315 

pered,  controlled,  or  enforced  at  every  step  by  custom. 
In  Borneo,  for  example,  an  expedition  prepared  by 
months  of  labour  will  turn  homeward  and  give  up  its 
objects  if  bad  omens  are  observed — if  a  particular  bird 
calls  on  one  side  or  the  other,  or  flies  across  the  river 
in  some  particular  fashion ;  or  a  newly-married  and  de- 
voted couple  will  separate  if  on  the  wedding  day  the  cry 
of  a  deer  is  heard  near  the  house. 

There  is  no  end  to  the  curious  and  absurd  customs, 
generally  supported  by  supernatural  sanctions,  by  which 
the  actions  of  savages  and  barbarians  are  commonly 
surrounded  and  hemmed  in.  We  have  to  remember  that, 
in  the  case  of  existing  savage  communities,  the  growth 
and  multiplication  of  customs  may  have  been  proceed- 
ing through  all  the  ages  during  which  the  few  progres- 
sive peoples  have  been  evolving  their  civilisation.  But 
enough  is  now  known  of  the  primitive  age  of  ancient 
Greece  and  Rome  to  show  that  the  great  civilisations  of 
these  states  took  their  rise  among  peoples  bound  hand 
and  foot  by  religious  custom  and  law  as  rigidly  as  any 
savages,^  and  to  show  also  that  the  dominant  religious 
emotion  was  fear.^ 

*The  system  of  omens  of  the  Romans  was  not  only  similar  in 
general  outline  to  that  of  some  existing  communities,  but  closely 
resembled  in  many  of  its  details  that  observed  at  the  present  day 
by  tribes  of  Central  Borneo — a  remarkable  illustration  of  the 
uniformity  of  the  human  mind.  (See  paper  by  the  author,  in 
conjunction  with  Dr.  C.  Hose,  on  "The  Relations  of  Men  and 
Animals  in  Sarawak,"  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute, 
I901.) 

•Fustel  de  Coulanges  has  drawn  a  vivid  picture  of  the  domi- 
nance of  this  religion  of  fear  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome ;  he 
writes:  "Ainsi,  en  temps  de  paix  et  en  temps  de  guerre,  la 
religion  intervenait  dans  tous  les  actes.  Elle  etait  partout  pre- 
SCnte,  cllc  enveloppait  I'homme.    L'ame,  le  corps,  la  vie  privee, 


3i6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

We  may  assume  with  confidence  that  the  formation 
of  a  mass  of  customary  observance  and  prohibition  was 
a  principal  feature  of  the  evolution  of  all  human  societies 
that  have  risen  above  the  lowest  level  and  have  survived 
through  any  considerable  period  of  time ;  not  only  be- 
cause the  existence  of  such  a  crust  of  custom  is  observ- 
able in  all  savage  and  barbarous  communities,  but  also 
because  in  its  earlier  stage  the  process  must  have  so 
strengthened  the  societies  in  which  it  took  place  that 
rival  societies  in  which  it  failed  could  not  have  stood  up 

la  vie  publique,  les  repas,  les  fetes,  les  assemblees,  les  tri- 
bunaux,  les  combats,  tout  etait  sous  I'empire  de  cette  religion 
de  la  cite.  Elle  reglait  toutes  les  actions  de  I'homme,  disposait 
de  tous  les  instants  de  sa  vie,  fixait  toutes  ses  habitudes.  Elle 
gouvernait  I'etre  humain  avec  une  autorite  si  absolue  qu'il  ne 
restait  rien  qui  fut  en  dehors  d'elle.  .  .  .  Cette  religion  etait 
un  ensemble  mal  lie  de  petites  croyances,  de  petites  pratiques, 
de  rites  minutieux.  II  n'en  f allait  pas  chercher  le  sens ;  il  n'y 
avait  pas  a  reflechir,  a  se  rendre  compte.  ...  La  religion  etait 
un  lien  materiel,  une  chaine  qui  tenait  I'homme  esclave.  L'homme 
se  I'etait  faite,  et  il  etait  gouverne  par  elle.  II  en  avait  peur  et 
n'osait  ni  raisonner,  ni  discuter,  ni  regarder  en  face.  .  .  .  Ni 
les  dieux  n'aimaient  I'homme,  ni  I'homme  n'aimait  ses  dieux. 
II  croyait  a  leur  existence,  mais  il  aurait  parfois  voulu  qu'ils 
n'existassent  pas.  Meme  ses  dieux  domestiques  ou  nationaux,  il 
les  redoutait,  il  craignait  d'etre  trahi  par  eux.  Encourir  la  haine 
de  ces  etres  invisibles  etait  sa  grande  inquietude.  II  etait  occupe 
toute  sa  vie  a  les  apaiser.  .  .  .  En  efifet,  cette  religion  si  compli- 
quee  etait  une  source  de  terreurs  pour  les  anciens;  comme  la 
foi  et  la  purete  des  intentions  etaient  peu  de  chose,  et  que  toute 
la  religion  consistait  dans  la  pratique  minutieuse  d'innombrables 
prescriptions,  on  devait  toujours  craindre  d'avoir  commis  quelque 
negligence,  quelque  omission  ou  quelque  erreur,  et  Ton  n'etait 
jamais  sur  de  n'etre  pas  sous  le  coup  de  la  colere  ou  de  la  rancune 
de  quelque  dieu."  As  to  the  rites :  "L'alteration  la  plus  legere 
troublait  et  bouleversait  la  religion  de  la  patrie,  et  transformait 
les  dieux  protecteurs  en  autant  d'ennemis  cruels"  ("La  Cite 
antique,"  pp.  186-196). 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      317 

against  them  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  And  this 
essential  step  of  social  evolution  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  the  main  produced  by  the  co-operation  of  the  instincts 
of  fear,  curiosity,  and  subjection. 

The  difficult  thing  to  understand  is  how  any  societies 
ever  managed  to  break  their  cake  of  custom,  to  become 
progressive  and  yet  to  survive.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  very 
few  have  become  progressive,  and  fewer  still  have  long 
survived  the  taking  of  this  step.  The  great  majority 
have  remained  in  the  bonds  of  custom.  And  these  cus- 
toms have  grown  ever  more  rigid  and  more  remote  in 
form  from  primitive  customs,  and  often  more  unreason- 
able and  absurd ;  in  many  cases  they  have  assumed  forms 
so  grotesque  that  it  is  difficult  to  suggest  their  psychologi- 
cal origin  and  history ;  and  in  many  cases  their  multiplicity 
and  rigidity  have  increased,  until  they  have  far  ex- 
ceeded the  socially  advantageous  limits. 

In  many  regions  the  fearful  element  in  religion  pre- 
dominated more  and  more,  the  gods  increasingly  as- 
sumed a  cruel  and  bloodthirsty  character,  until,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Aztecs  of  ancient  Mexico,  the  religious  ritual 
by  which  they  were  appeased  involved  the  sacrifice  of 
herds  of  victims,  and  their  altars  were  constantly  wet 
with  human  blood. 

These  elements  and  forces  of  primitive  religion  have 
lived  on,  continuing  to  play  their  parts,  while  religion 
rose  to  a  higher  plane  on  which  tender  emotion,  in  the 
form  of  gratitude,  mingled  more  and  more  with  awe, 
blended  with  it,  and  converted  it  to  reverence. 

This  change  in  the  nature  of  religious  emotion  among 
those  peoples  that  have  survived  and  progressed  was  a 
natural  consequence  of  their  success  in  the  struggle  of 
groups  for  survival.  For  the  surviving  communities  are 
those  whose  gods  have  in  the  main,  not  only  spared  them, 


3i8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

not  only  abstained  from  bringing  plague  and  famine 
and  military  disaster  upon  them  in  too  severe  measure, 
but  have  actively  supported  them  and  enabled  them  to 
overcome  their  enemies.  Communities  that  are  continu- 
ously successful  in  battle  naturally  tend  to  conceive  the 
divine  power  as  a  god  of  battles  who  smites  the  enemy 
hip  and  thigh  and  delivers  them  into  the  hands  of  his 
chosen  people  to  be  their  slaves  and  to  add  to  their 
wealth  and  power.  Thus  the  early  Romans,  as  they 
emerged  triumphant  from  successive  wars  with  the 
neighbouring  cities  and  grew  in  power  and  wealth,  natur- 
ally and  inevitably  acquired  some  confidence  in  the  benef- 
icence of  their  gods;  they  began  to  fear  them  less  and 
to  feel  some  gratitude  towards  them. 

The  utterly  cruel  gods  could  continue  to  survive  only 
among  communities  not  subjected  to  any  severe  struggle 
with  other  groups,  as,  for  example,  among  the  com- 
paratively isolated  Aztecs  of  Mexico. 

Nevertheless,  in  almost  all  religions,  fear  of  divine 
punishment  has  continued  to  play  its  all-important  part 
in  securing  observance  of  social  custom  and  law,  and  in 
leading  communities  to  enforce  their  customs  with  severe 
penalties.  The  divine  power  remains  for  long  ages  a 
very  jealous  god  (or  gods),  whose  anger  against  a  whole 
people  may  be  stirred  by  the  offences  of  individuals. 
This  feature,  namely,  communal  responsibility  before  the 
gods,  to  which  in  primitive  societies  the  supernatural 
sanctions  owe  their  tremendous  power  as  agents  of  social 
discipline,  was  clearly  present  even  in  the  religion  of 
Athens  at  the  time  of  its  highest  culture;  and  even  in 
our  own  age  and  country  the  belief  still  survives  and 
finds  occasional  expression  (or  did  so  very  recently)  in 
the  observance  of  days  of  national  humiliation. 

But,  as  societies  became  larger  and  more  complex,  this 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      319 

principle  necessarily  weakened.  Man's  sense  of  justice 
rebelled  against  the  ascription  of  so  much  injustice 
to  the  gods,  whom  he  was  learning  to  regard  with  grati- 
tude and  reverence  as  well  as  awe.  Man  is  never  long 
content  to  worship  gods  of  moral  character  greatly  in- 
ferior to  his  own.  Hence  the  onus  of  responsibility  for 
breaches  of  law  and  custom  tends  to  be  shifted  back  to 
the  offending  individual.  And  then,  since  it  was  ob- 
vious in  every  age  that  the  wicked  man  often  flourishes 
during  this  life,  it  became  necessary  to  assume  that  the 
vengeance  of  the  supernatural  powers  falls  upon  him  in 
the  life  beyond  the  grave.  Hence  we  find  that,  while 
societies  are  small  and  compact,  communal  responsibility 
for  individual  wrong-doing  is  the  rule,  and  the  idea  of 
punishment  after  death  is  hardly  entertained ;  but  that, 
with  the  growth  in  size  and  complexity  of  a  society  and 
with  the  improvement  of  its  moral  ideas,  belief  in  com- 
munal responsibility  declines,  and  belief  in  punishment  of 
wrong-doing  after  death  arises  to  take  its  place  as  the 
effective  sanction  of  custom  and  law.  The  most  notable 
example  of  this  process  is,  of  course,  afforded  by  the 
hell-fire  which  has  played  so  great  a  part  in  the  sterner 
forms  of  Christianity.  And  the  long  persistence  of  fear 
and  awe  in  religion  is  well  illustrated  by  the  phrase 
widely  current  among  the  generation  recently  passed 
away,  "an  upright,  god-fearing  man,"  a  phrase  which  ex- 
presses the  tendency  to  identify  uprightness  with  god- 
fearingness,  or,  rather,  to  recognise  fear  as  the  source 
and  regulator  of  social  conduct.  It  is  a  nice  question : 
To  what  extent  is  the  lapse  from  orthodox  observances, 
so  remarkable  and  widespread  among  the  more  highly 
civilised  peoples  at  the  present  time,  due  to  the  general 
softening  of  religious  teaching,  to  the  lapse  of  the  doc- 
trine of  divine  retribution  to  a  very  secondary  position, 


320  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  to  the  discredit  into  which  the  flames  of  hell  have 
fallen  ?i 

It  has  been  contended  by  some  authors  that  religion 
and  morality  were  primitively  distinct,  and  that  the  in- 
timate connection  commonly  obtaining  between  them  in 
civilised  societies  arose  comparatively  late  in  the  course 
of  social  development.    This  contention,  which  is  opposed 
to  the  view  of  religious  development  sketched  in  the  fore- 
going pages,  is  true  only  if  we  attach  an  unduly  narrow 
meaning  to  the  words  "religion"  and  "morality."     Al- 
though many  of   the  modes  of  conduct  prescribed  by 
primitive   and   savage   custom   and   enforced  by   super- 
natural sanctions  are  not  such  as  we  regard  as  moral, 
and  are  in  many  cases  even  detrimental  to  the  simple 
societies  in  which  such  customs  obtain,  and  so  cannot  be 
justified  by  any  utilitarian  principle,  yet  we  must  class  the 
observance  of  such  custom  as  moral  conduct.     For  the 
/Essence  of  moral  conduct  is  the  performance  of  social 
/  duty,  the  duty  prescribed  by  society,  as  opposed  to  the 
\  mere  following  of  the  promptings  of  egoistic  impulses. 
\Ii  we  define  moral  conduct  in  this  broad  sense,  and  this 
■is  the  only  satisfactory  definition  of  it  ^ — then,  no  matter 
how  grotesque  and,  from  our  point  of  view,  how  immoral 
the  prescribed  codes  of  conduct  of  other  societies  may 
appear  to  be,  we  must  admit  conformity  to  the  code  to  be 
moral  conduct ;  and  we  must  admit  that  religion  from  its 

*  On  the  great  role  of  fear  in  the  more  primitive  forms  of 
religion,  and  the  decHne  of  its  influence  in  recent  times,  see  an 
article  by  Professor  J.  H.  Leuba,  "Fear,  Awe,  and  the  Sublime 
in  Religion,"  in  the  American  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology, 
vol.  ii. 

'There  is,  of  course,  the  higher  kind  of  morality  of  the  man 
w^ho,  wfhile  accepting  in  the  main  the  prescribed  social  code, 
attempts  by  his  example  and  precept  to  improve  it  in  certain 
respects. 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      321 

first  crude  beginnings  was  bound  up  with  morality  in 
some  such  way  as  we  have  briefly  sketched ;  that  the  two 
things,  reHgion  and  morality,  were  not  at  first  separate 
and  later  fused  together;  but  that  they  were  always  in- 
timately related,  and  have  reciprocally  acted  and  reacted 
upon  one  another  throughout  the  course  of  their  evolu- 
tion. We  must  recognise  also  that  a  firm  and  harmoni- 
ous relation  between  them  has  been  in  every  age  a  main 
condition  of  the  stabiHty  of  societies. 

The  hypothetical  sketch  of  the  early  development  of 
morality,  the  most  essential  condition  of  all  develop- 
ment of  social  life,  contained  in  the  foregoing  pages 
may  be  summarised  as  follows:  Moral  conduct  consists 
in  the  regulation  and  control  of  the  immediate  prompt- 
ings of  impulse  in  conformity  with  some  prescribed  code 
of  conduct.  The  first  stage  was  the  control  of  impulse 
through  fear  of  individual  retribution.  Advance  from 
this  level  took  place  through  three  principal  changes:  (i) 
the  general  recognition  and  customary  observance  of  in- 
dividual rights  which  before  had  been  claimed  only  by 
individuals  and  enforced  only  by  their  superior  strength ; 
(2)  an  increase  in  the  number  of  kinds  of  action  regu- 
lated by  customary  law;  (3)  an  increase  of  the  effective- 
ness of  the  sanctions  of  these  laws ;  the  principal  change 
in  this  connection  being  the  introduction  of  supernatural 
powers  (i.e. J  powers  which  we  regard  as  supernatural) 
as  the  guardians  of  patrons  of  custom,  resulting  (a)  in 
the  stern  enforcement  of  customs  by  the  whole  com- 
munity, which  feels  itself  collectively  responsible  to 
these  powers,  and  (b)  in  the  supplementing  of  the  fear 
of  human  retribution  by  the  fear  of  divine  retribution; 
(4)  a  change  in  the  innate  dispositions  of  men,  consist- 
ing in  a  development  of  those  features  of  the  mind  which 
render  possible  a  prudent  and  more  complete  control  of 


322  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  primary  impulses,  a  change  effected  in  the  earher 
stages  chiefly  by  individual  selection,  in  later  stages 
chiefly  by  military  group-selection. 

In  the  production  of  this  evolution  of  morality  the 
instincts  of  pugnacity  (probably  largely  under  the  form 
of  male  jealousy)  and  of  fear  w^ere  the  all-important 
factors  as  regards  the  first  stages;  while  in  later  stages 
these  great  socialising  forces  were  supplemented  by  the 
impulses  of  curiosity  or  wonder,  or  subjection,  and,  at 
a  still  later  stage,  by  the  tender  protective  impulse  evoked 
principally  in  the  form  of  gratitude  towards  the  protect- 
ing deities. 

A  few  more  words  must  be  said  about  the  role  of 
curiosity  as  a  force  in  the  life  of  societies.  For,  al- 
though it  has  no  doubt  played,  largely  under  the  forms 
of  wonder  and  admiration,  a  leading  part  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  religion,  and  in  so  far  has  been  one  of  the  con- 
servative forces  of  society,  it  has  played  also  a  no  less 
important  part  of  a  very  different  tendency.  The  in- 
stinct of  curiosity  is  at  the  base  of  many  of  man's  most 
splendid  achievements,  for  rooted  in  it  are  his  specula- 
tive and  scientific  tendencies.  It  has  been  justly  main- 
tained by  J.  S.  Mill,  by  T.  H.  Buckle,  and  others,  that 
the  free  and  effective  operation  of  these  tendencies  in 
any  society  is  not  only  the  gauge  of  that  society's  posi- 
tion in  the  scale  of  civilisation,  but  also  the  principal  con- 
dition of  the  progress  of  a  people  in  all  that  constitutes 
civilisation.  No  attempt  can  be  made  here  to  support 
this  view.  But  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  its  truth  is 
brought  home  to  the  mind  by  cursorily  reviewing  the 
periods  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  speculative  rea- 
son. Such  a  review  will  show  that  these  periods  coin- 
cide approximately  with  the  periods  of  the  most  rapid 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      323 

progress  of  social  evolution ;  each  such  period  of  the  life 
of  a  people  being  commonly  followed  by  one  of  social 
stagnation,  during  which  the  leading  minds  remain  con- 
tent to  brood  over  the  wisdom  of  the  ancient  sages,  Con- 
fucius, Aristotle,  or  Galen,  regarding  their  achievements 
as  unapproachable,  authoritative,  and  supreme. 

It  is  the  insatiable  curiosity  of  the  modern  European 
and  American  mind  that,  more  than  anything  else,  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  all  others  and  is  the  source  of  the  im- 
mensely increased  power  over  nature  and  over  man  that 
we  now  possess.  Contrast  our  sceptical,  insatiable, 
North-Pole-hunting  disposition  with  that  of  most  East- 
ern peoples.^ 

If  we  attempt  briefly  to  characterise  the  achievements 
that  we  owe  to  the  speculative  tendencies  rooted  in  the 

*  This  contrast  cannot  be  better  illustrated  than  by  quoting 
a  part  of  a  letter  from  a  Turkish  official  to  an  English  seeker 
after  statistical  information :  "The  thing  you  ask  of  me  is  both 
difficult  and  useless.  Although  I  have  passed  all  my  days  in  this 
place,  I  have  neither  counted  the  houses,  nor  inquired  into  the 
number  of  the  inhabitants ;  and  as  to  what  one  person  loads  on 
his  mules  and  the  other  stows  away  in  the  bottom  of  his  ship, 
that  is  no  business  of  mine.  But,  above  all,  as  to  the  previous 
history  of  this  city,  God  only  knows  the  amount  of  dirt  and  con- 
fusion that  the  infidels  may  have  eaten  before  the  coming  of  the 
sword  of  Islam.  It  were  unprofitable  for  us  to  inquire  into  it. 
O  my  soul !  O  my  lamb !  seek  not  after  the  things  which  con- 
cern thee  not.  Thou  earnest  with  us  and  we  welcomed  thee — go 
in  peace.  .  .  .  Listen,  O  my  son !  There  is  no  wisdom  equal 
unto  the  belief  in  God !  He  created  the  world,  and  shall  we 
liken  ourselves  unto  Him  in  seeking  to  penetrate  into  the 
mysteries  of  His  creation?  Shall  we  say,  Behold  this  star 
spinneth  round  that  star,  and  this  other  star  with  a  tail  goeth 
and  Cometh  in  so  many  years !  Let  it  go !  He  from  whose 
hand  it  came  will  guide  and  direct  it."  The  letter  is  quoted  in 
full  by  Professor  James  (from  whom  I  copy)  from  Sir  A.  Lay- 
ard's  "Nineveh  and  Babylon." 


324  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

instinct  of  curiosity,  we  find  that  they  may  for  the  most 
part  be  summed  up  under  the  head  of  improvements  in 
our  conception  of  causation.  Mr.  Stuart  Glennie  has 
formulated,  as  the  fundamental  law  of  intellectual  de- 
velopment, the  law  of  the  advance  from  a  quantitatively 
undetermined  to  a  quantitatively  determined  conception 
of  the  reciprocal  action  or  interaction  of  all  things ;  that 
is  to  say,  he  maintains  that  the  main  cause  of  human 
progress  is  the  advance  from  very  imperfect  and  mis- 
leading views  of  causation  to  more  accurate  views ;  and 
in  place  of  Comte's  three  stages  of  thought — the  theo- 
logical, the  metaphysical,  and  the  positive — he  would 
distinguish  the  magical,  the  supernatural,  and  the  scien- 
tific stages  of  this  advance  in  man's  notion  of  causation. 

There  is  truth  in  this  formulation ;  but  we  must  recog- 
nise that  the  stages  do  not  succeed  one  another  in 
clearly  distinguishable  periods  of  time,  but  rather  that 
the  three  modes  of  thought  coexist  among  every  people 
that  has  progressed  beyond  savagery,  and  will  probably 
always  coexist :  we  must  recognise  that  progress  con- 
sists in,  and  results  from,  the  increasing  dominance  of 
the  second,  and  especially  of  the  third,  over  the  first, 
rather  than  in  any  complete  substitution  of  one  for  an- 
other. 

The  magical  mode  of  thought  and  practice  is  the  im- 
mediate expression  of  man's  need  and  desire  to  control 
the  forces  of  his  environment,  while  yet  he  knows  noth- 
ing of  their  nature.  At  this  stage  man  conceives  all 
things  to  be  capable  of  reciprocal  action,  but  as  to  the 
modes  of  their  interaction  he  has  but  the  vaguest  and 
most  inaccurate  notions.  Hence,  in  atte^upting  to  control 
these  forces,  he  adopts  whatever  procedure  suggests 
itself  in  virtue  of  the  natural  associative  conjunctions 
of  his  ideas ;  as  when  he  attempts  to  cause  rain  by  sprink- 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      325 

ling  water  on  the  ground  with  certain  traditional  formali- 
ties, to  raise  wind  by  whistling  or  by  imitating  the  sound 
of  it  with  the  bull-roarer,  to  bring  disease  or  death  by 
maltreating  an  effigy  of  his  enemy,  to  cure  pain  and 
disease  by  drawing  it  out  of  the  body  in  the  form  of  a 
material  object  or  imaginary  entity. 

Though  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  such  practices  has 
maintained  itself  with  wonderful  persistency  through 
long  ages,  yet  the  lack  of  success  that  so  often  attends 
them  forbids  man  to  remain  for  ever  satisfied  with  them, 
or  to  feel  that  he  has  a  power  of  control  over  nature 
adequate  to  his  needs.  Hence  his  imaginative  faculty, 
operating  under  the  impulse  of  curiosity  or  wonder, 
evolves  great  supernatural  powers  which  he  regards  with 
awe  and  submission.  Society  recognises  these  powers, 
and  a  traditional  cult  of  them  grows  up,  and  the  system 
of  supernatural  explanation  of  natural  events  enters 
upon  its  long  period  of  dominance.  All  the  unprogres- 
sive  societies  of  the  earth  remain  (as  so  well  depicted  in 
the  passage  quoted  in  the  footnote  of  p.  323)  in  this 
stage  in  which  theories  of  causation  are  predominantly 
supernatural  and  personal. 

But  in  most  societies  there  have  been,  throughout  the 
period  of  dominance  of  supernatural  explanations,  a  cer- 
tain number  of  men  whose  curiosity  was  not  satisfied  by 
the  current  systems.  They  have  maintained  the  magical 
attitude,  and,  impelled  by  curiosity,  have  sought  to  in- 
crease their  direct  influence  upon  natural  forces  by 
achieving  a  better  understanding  of  them.  These  are  the 
wizards,  the  medicine-men,  the  alchemists  and  astrolo- 
gers, the  independent  thinkers,  who  at  almost  all  times 
and  places  have  been  reprobated  and  persecuted  by  the 
official  representatives  of  the  supernatural  cults.  In 
most  of  the  societies  that  have  survived  in  the  struggle 


326  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

for  existence,  the  impulse  of  curiosity  has  not  been 
strong  enough  to  make  head  against  these  repressive 
measures.  For  the  strength  of  the  social  sanctions,  de- 
rived from  the  belief  in  the  supernatural  powers  and 
from  the  awe  and  reverence  excited  by  the  ideas  of  these 
powers,  was  a  main  condition  of  the  strength  and 
stability  of  society;  and  no  society  has  been  able  to  sur- 
vive in  any  severe  and  prolonged  conflict  of  societies, 
without  some  effective  system  of  such  sanctions.  Hence 
we  find  a  survival  of  the  primitive  predominance  of  the 
magical  conception  of  causation  only  among  peoples  such 
as  the  natives  of  Australia,  which,  owing  to  their  pe- 
culiar geographical  conditions,  have  never  been  sub- 
jected to  any  severe  process  of  group-selection.  While 
all  societies  that  have  made  any  considerable  progress  in 
civilisation  have  been  enabled  to  do  so  only  in  virtue  of 
the  stability  they  derived  from  their  system  of  super- 
natural sanctions. 

Hence  the  age-long,  inevitable,  and  radical  antagonism 
between  the  conservative  spirit  of  religion  and  the  pro- 
gressive spirit  of  inquiry.  The  progress  of  mankind 
has  only  been  rendered  possible  by  their  coexistence  and 
conjoint  operation.  In  the  main,  those  societies  which, 
in  virtue  of  the  strength  and  social  efficiency  of  their 
system  of  supernatural  beliefs  and  sanctions,  have  been 
most  stable  and  capable  of  enduring  have  been  least 
tolerant  of  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  and  therefore  least  pro- 
gressive ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  flourishing  of  scepticism 
has  been  too  often  the  forerunner  of  social  decay,  as  in 
ancient  Greece  and  Rome.  Continued  progress  has  been 
rendered  possible  only  by  the  fact  that  the  gains  achieved 
by  the  spirit  of  inquiry  have  survived  the  dissolution  of 
the  societies  in  which  they  have  been  achieved  (and  to 
which  that  spirit  has  proved   fatal)    through  becoming 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION      ^27 

imitatively  taken  up  into  the  culture  of  societies  in  which 
the  conservative  spirit  continued  to  predominate. 

At  the  present  time  it  may  seem  that  in  one  small 
quarter  of  the  world,  namely,  Western  Europe,  society 
has  achieved  an  organisation  so  intrinsically  stable  that 
it  may  with  impunity  tolerate  the  flourishing  of  the  spirit 
of  inquiry  and  give  free  rein  to  the  impulse  of  curiosity. 
But  to  assume  that  this  is  the  case  would  be  rash.  The 
issue  remains  doubtful.  The  spirit  of  inquiry  has  broken 
all  its  bonds  and  soared  gloriously,  until  now  the  con- 
ception of  natural  causation  predominates  in  every  field ; 
and,  if  the  notion  of  supernatural  powers  still  persists  in 
the  minds  of  men,  it  is  in  the  form  of  the  conception  of 
a  Divine  Creator  who  maintains  the  laws  that  He  has 
made,  but  does  not  constantly  interfere  with  their  opera- 
tion. This  change  of  belief,  this  withdrawal  of  super- 
natural power  from  immediate  intervention  in  the  life  of 
mankind,  inevitably  and  greatly  diminishes  the  social  ef- 
ficiency of  the  supernatural  sanctions.  Whether  our  so- 
cieties will  prove  capable  of  long  surviving  this  process 
is  the  most  momentous  of  the  problems  confronting 
Western  Civilisation.  The  answer  to  it  is  a  secret  hid- 
den in  the  bosom  of  the  future.  If  they  shall  survive 
the  change,  it  can  only  be  because  the  impulse  of  curi- 
osity, carrying  forward  the  work  that  it  has  so  splendidly 
begun,  will  rapidly  increase  man's  understanding  of,  and 
control  over,  his  own  nature  and  the  conditions  of 
healthy  and  vigorous  social  life.'^ 

Of  the  instinct  of  self-display  little  need  be  said  in 
this  section.  Not  because  it  is  not  of  the  first  importance 
for  social  life,  but  because  what  was  said  of  it  in  Sec- 
tion I.  suffices  to  show  the  view  I  take  of  its  importance 

*  See  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour's  lecture  on  "Deca- 
dence," Cambridge,  1908. 


328  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

and  how  it  becomes  incorporated  in  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  and  plays  a  part  in  all  true  volition.  Here 
I  would  only  add  that  in  my  view  it  plays  a  similarly  es- 
sential part  in  all  true  collective  volition,  being  incor- 
porated in  the  sentiment  for  the  family,  tribe,  or  nation, 
or  other  social  aggregate  that  exerts  such  volition.  But 
the  discussion  and  illustration  of  the  nature  of  collective 
mental  processes  falls  outside  the  plan  of  this  volume. 

Of  the  social  functions  of  the  instinct  of  submission 
something  has  been  said  in  Section  L  and  in  the  fore- 
going pages  of  this  Section.  But  one  of  its  most  im- 
portant social  operations  is  the  determination  of  the 
imitative,  suggestible  attitude  of  men  and  of  societies 
towards  one  another ;  and  of  this  something  will  be  said 
in  the  last  chapter.^ 

^  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  religious  tendencies  of  primi- 
tive man,  the  reader  may  be  referred  to  Mr.  R.  R.  Marett's 
"Threshold  of  Religion"  (London,  1909).  In  that  work  Mr. 
Marett  traces  back  the  evolution  of  religion  to  a  preanimistic 
stage,  which  he  proposes  to  denote  by  the  word  "animatism."  It 
will  be  seen  that  my  own  brief  sketch  is  in  substantial  agree- 
ment with  his  view. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

THE   INSTINCTS   OF   ACQUISITION    AND    CONSTRUCTION 

THE  two  instincts  last  mentioned  in  Chapter  III., 
namely,  those  of  acquisitiveness  or  cupidity  and  of 
construction,  are  not  directly  social  in  their  operation, 
but  indirectly  they  exert  important  effects  in  the  life  of 
societies,  of  which  a  few  words  may  be  said.  , 

The  importance  of  the  instinct  of  acquisition,  from  j 
our  present  point  of  view,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  must  ' 
have  greatly  favoured,  if  it  was  not  an  essential  con- 
dition of,  that  accumulation  of  material  wealth  which 
was  necessary  for  the  progress  of  civilisation  beyond  its 
earliest  stages. 

There  are  still  in  existence  people  who  support  them- 
selves only  by  hunting  and  the  collection  of  wild  fruits, 
having  no  houses  or  fixed  places  of  abode,  nor  any  pos- 
sessions beyond  what  they  carry  in  their  hands  from 
place  to  place.^  Among  them  this  instinct  would  seem 
to  be  deficient;  or  perhaps  it  is,  that  it  never  is  able  to 
determine  the  formation  of  a  corresponding  habit  owing 
to  their  wandering  mode  of  life.  Among  pastoral  nomads 
the  working  of  the  instinct  is  manifested  in  the  vast  herds 
sometimes  accumulated  by  a  single  patriarchal  family.^ 

*One  of  the  most  interesting  of  such  peoples  are  the  Punans 
of  Borneo,  a  remarkably  pleasing,  gentle-mannered,  handsome, 
and  fair-skinned  race  of  forest-dwellers. 

'  See  "Comment  la  Route  cree  le  Type  social,"  by  M.  Ed. 
Demolins. 

329 


330  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

But  it  was  only  when  agriculture  began  to  be  extensively 
practised  that  the  instinct  could  produce  its  greatest 
social  effects.  For  grain  of  all  sorts  lends  itself  especially 
well  to  hoarding  as  a  form  of  wealth.  It  is  compact  and 
valuable  in  proportion  to  its  bulk,  can  be  kept  for  long 
periods  without  serious  deterioration,  and  is  easily  stored, 
divided,  and  transported.  Most  of  the  civilisations  that 
have  achieved  any  considerable  development  have  been 
based  on  the  accumulation  of  stores  of  grain.  Besides 
being  a  very  important  form  of  capital,  it  was  one  of 
the  earliest  and  most  important  objects  of  trade,  and 
trade  must  always  have  exerted  a  socialising  influence. 

Although  in  highly  civilised  societies  the  motives  that 
lead  to  the  accumulation  of  capital  become  very  complex, 
[yet  acquisitiveness,  the  desire  for  mere  possession  of 
f  goods,  remains  probably  the  most  fundamental  of  them, 
blending  and  co-operating  with  all  other  motives ;  this 
impulse,  more  than  all  others,  is  capable  of  obtaining  con- 
tinuous or  continually  renewed  gratifications ;  for  while, 
in  the  course  of  satisfaction  of  most  other  desires,  the 
point  of  satiety  is  soon  reached,  the  demands  of  this 
'One  grow  greater  without  limit,  so  that  it  knows  no 
satiety.  How  few  men  are  content  with  the  possession 
of  what  they  need  for  the  satisfaction  of  all  other  de- 
sires than  this  desire  for  possession  for  its  own  sake !  It 
is  this  excess  of  activity  beyond  that  required  for  the 
satisfaction  of  all  other  material  needs,  that  results  in 
the  accumulation  of  the  capital  which  is  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  development  of  civilisation.  It  might  be 
plausibly  maintained  that  the  phenomena  with  which 
economic  science  is  concerned  are  in  the  main  the  out- 
come of  the  operation  of  this  instinct,  rather  than  of  the 
enlightened  self-interest  of  the  classical  economists. 

The  possession  and  acquisition  of  land  affords  satis- 


ACQUISITION  AND  CONSTRUCTION     331 

faction  to  this  desire  in  a  very  full  degree,  land  being 
a  so  permanent  and  indestructible  form  of  property. 
And  this  instinct  has  played  its  part,  not  only  in  the 
building  up  of  large  private  estates — the  tendency  to  the 
indefinite  growth  of  vi^hich  everywhere  manifests  itself 
— but  also  in  the  causation  of  the  many  wars  that  have 
been  waged  for  the  possession  of  territories.  Wars  of 
this  type  are  characteristic  of  autocracies ;  for  the  de- 
sire to  possess  is  more  effective  in  promoting  action  when 
the  thing  to  be  acquired  is  to  become  the  possession  of  a 
single  individual,  than  if  it  is  to  be  shared  by  all  the 
members  of  a  democratic  community.  Accordingly,  one 
of  the  most  striking  effects  of  the  democratisation  of 
States  is  the  passing  away  of  wars  of  this  worst  type. 

The  principal  social  effects  of  the  instinct  of  construc- 
tion are  produced  by  the  necessity  for  co-operation  in 
works  of  construction  that  surpass  the  powers  of  in- 
dividuals, especially  architectural  works.  Among  all 
peoples,  this  tendency  to  co-operation  in  large  architec- 
tural constructions,  huge  totem  poles,  monoliths,  temples, 
or  massive  tombs  like  the  pyramids  of  Egypt,  shows  it- 
self as  soon  as  they  attain  a  settled  mode  of  life;  and 
these  works  tend  to  confirm  them  in  the  settled  mode  of 
life,  and  to  strengthen  the  social  bonds. 


CHAPTER  XV 

IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT 

/TN  Chapter  IV.  we  discussed  the  three  fundamental 
'-■-  forms  of  mental  interaction — suggestion,  sympathy, 
and  imitation.  In  each  case,  we  said,  the  process  of  in- 
teraction results  in  the  assimilation  of  the  mental  state 
of  the  recipient  or  patient  to  that  of  the  agent.  In  each 
case  We  need  a  pair  of  words  to  denote  the  parts  of  the 
agent  and  of  the  patient  respectively.  "Suggest"  denotes 
the  part  of  the  agent  in  assimilating  the  cognitive  state 
of  the  patient  to  his  own;  but  we  have  no  word  for 
the  part  played  by  the  patient  in  the  process,  unless  we 
adopt  the  ugly  expression — "to  be  suggestioned."  "Imi- 
tate" and  "sympathise"  denote  the  part  of  the  patient  in 
the  process  of  assimilation  of  his  actions  and  of  his 
affective  state  to  those  of  the  agent ;  but  we  have  no 
words  denoting  the  part  of  the  agent  in  these  processes. 
Since  these  three  processes  co-operate  intimately 
in  social  life,  we  may  avoid  the  difficulty  arising  from 
this  lack  of  terms  by  following  M.  Tarde,^  who  extends 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "imitation"  to  cover  all  three 
processes  as  viewed  from  the  side  of  the -patient.  If 
we  do  that,  we  still  need  a  correlative  word  to  denote 
all  three  processes  viewed  from  the  side  of  the  agent. 
I  propose  to  use  the  words  "impress"  and  "impression" 

*  "Les  Lois   de   I'lmitation,"   Paris,   1904,   and   "Les  Lois   So- 
ciales,"  Paris,  1902. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  333 

in  this  sense.^  We  may  also  follow  M.  Tarde  in  uskig 
"contra-imitation"  to  denote  the  process  of  contra-sug- 
gestion  viewed  from  the  side  of  the  patient. 

Impression  and  imitation  are,  then,  processes  of  fun-  • 
damental  importance  for  social  life.  M.  Tarde  writes: 
— "Nous  dirons  done  .  .  .  qu'une  societe  est  un  groupe 
de  gens  qui  presentent  entre  eux  beaucoup  de  similitudes 
produites  par  imitation  ou  par  contre-imitation" ;-  and  in 
thus  making  imitation  the  very  essence  of  social  life  he 
hardly  exaggerates  its  importance.  In  Section  I.  we  have 
considered  some  of  the  ways  in  which  imitation  moulds 
the  growing  individual  and  assimilates  him  to  the  type  of 
the  society  into  which  he  is  born.  In  this  Section  we 
must  consider  the  results  of  imitation  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  society  as  a  whole  rather  than  from  that  of 
the  development  of  the  individual. 

Imitation  is  the  prime  condition  of  all  collective  mental  'I 
life.  I  propose  to  reserve  for  another  volume  the  de- 
tailed study  of  collective  mental  processes.  Here  I  would 
dismiss  the  subject  by  merely  pointing  out  that  when 
men  think,  feel,  and  act  as  members  of  a  group  of  any 
kind — whether  a  mere  mob,  a  committee,  a  political  or 
religious  association,  a  city,  a  nation,  or  any  other  social 
aggregate — their  collective  actions  show  that  the  mental 
processes  of  each  man  have  been  profoundly  modified  in 
virtue  of  the  fact  that  he  thought,  felt,  and  acted  as  one 
of  a  group  and  in  reciprocal  mental  action  with  the  other 
members  of  the  group  and  with  the  group  as  a  whole. 
In  the  simpler  forms  of  social  grouping,  imitation  (taken 
in  the  wide  sense  defined  above)  is  the  principal  condition 
of  this  profound  alteration  of  the  individual's  mental 
processes.     And,  even  in  the  most  developed  forms  of 

*  Following  in  this  respect  Professor  Giddings. 
'"Les  Lois  de  I'lmitation,"  p.  xii. 


334  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

social  aggregation,  it  plays  a  fundamental  part  (although 
greatly  complicated  by  other  factors)  in  rendering  pos- 
sible the  existence  and  operation  of  the  collective  mind, 
its  collective  deliberation,  emotion,  character,  and  voli- 
tion. 

Without  entering  further  into  the  discussion  of  the 
conditions,  nature,  and  operations  of  the  collective  mind, 
we  may  note  some  of  the  principal  points  of  interest 
presented  by  imitation  as  a  social  factor. 

In  the  development  of  individual  human  beings,  imi- 
tation, as  we  have  seen,  is  the  great  agency  through 
which  the  child  is  led  on  from  the  life  of  mere  animal 
impulse  to  the  life  of  self-control,  deliberation,  and  true 
volition.  And  it  has  played  a  similar  part  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  race  and  of  human  society. 

The  mental  constitution  of  man  differs  from  that  of 
the  highest  animals  chiefly  in  that  man  has  an  indefinirely 
greater  power  of  learning,  of  profiting  by  experience,  of 
acquiring  new  modes  of  reaction  and  adjustment  to  an 
immense  variety  of  situations.  This  superiority  of  man 
would  seem  to  be  due  in  the  main  to  his  possession  of  a 
very  large  brain,  containing  a  mass  of  plastic  nervous 
tissue  which  exceeds  in  bulk  the  sum  of  the  innately 
organised  parts  and  makes  up  the  principal  part  of  the 
substance  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres.  This  great  brain, 
and  the  immense  capacity  for  mental  adaptation  and  ac- 
quisition implied  by  it,  must  have  been  evolved  hand 
in  hand  with  the  development  of  man's  social  life  and 
with  that  of  language,  the  great  agent  and  promoter  of 
social  life.  For  to  an  individual  living  apart  from  any 
human  society  the  greater  part  of  this  brain  and  of  this 
capacity  for  acquisition  would  be  useless  and  would  lie 
dormant  for  lack  of  any  store  of  knowledge,  belief,  and 
custom  to  be  acquired  or  assimilated.     Whereas  animal 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  335 

species  have  advanced  from  lower  to  higher  levels  of 
mental  life  by  the  improvement  of  the  innate  mental 
constitution  of  the  species,  man,  since  he  became  man, 
has  progressed  in  the  main  by  means  of  the  increase  in 
volume  and  improvement  in  quality  of  the  sum  of  knowl- 
edge, belief,  and  custom,  which  constitutes  the  tradition 
of  any  society.  And  it  is  to  the  superiority  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  tradition  of  his  society  that  the  superi- 
ority of  civilised  man  over  existing  savages  and  over  his 
savage  forefathers  is  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  due.  This 
increase  and  improvement  of  tradition  has  been  effected 
by  countless  steps,  each  relatively  small  and  unimpor- 
tant, initiated  by  the  few  original  minds  of  the  successive 
generations  and  incorporated  in  the  social  tradition 
through  the  acceptance  or  imitation  of  them  by  the  mass 
of  men.  All  that  constitutes  culture  and  civilisation,  all, 
or  nearly  all,  that  distinguishes  the  highly  cultured 
European  intellectually  and  morally  from  the  men  of 
the  stone  age  of  Europe,  is  then  summed  up  in  the  word 
"tradition,"  and  all  tradition  exists  only  in  virtue  of 
imitation ;  for  it  is  only  by  imitation  that  each  genera- 
tion takes  up  and  makes  its  own  the  tradition  of  the  pre- 
ceding generation ;  and  it  is  only  by  imitation  that  any 
improvement,  conceived  by  any  mind  endowed  with  that 
rarest  of  all  things,  a  spark  of  originality,  can  become  em- 
bodied within  the  tradition  of  his  society. 

Imitation  is,  then,  not  only  the  great  conservative  force  i 
of  society,  it  is  also  essential  to  all  social  progress.    We 
may  briefly  glance  at  its  social  operations,  under  these 
two  heads.^ 

^  The  following  summary  account  of  the  social  operations  of 
imitation  is  in  large  part  extracted  from  M.  Tarde's  well-known 
treatise,  "Les  Lois  de  I'lmitation." 


336  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Imitation  as  a  Conservative  Agency 

The  similarities  obtaining  between  the  individuals  of 
any  one  country,  any  one  county,  social  class,  school, 
university,  profession,  or  community  of  any  kind,  and 
distinguishing  them  from  the  members  of  any  other  simi- 
lar community,  are  in  the  main  due  to  the  more  intimate 
intercourse  with  one  another  of  the  members  of  the 
one  community,  to  their  consequent  imitation  of  one  an- 
other, and  to  their  acceptance  by  imitation  of  the  same 
tradition.  Under  this  head  fall  similarities  of  language, 
of  religious,  political,  and  moral  convictions,  habits  of 
dressing,  eating,  dwelling,  and  of  recreation,  all  those 
routine  activities  which  make  up  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  the  lives  of  men.^ 

There  is  widely  current  a  vague  belief  that  the  na- 
tional characteristics  of  the  people  of  any  country  are 
in  the  main  innate  characters.  But  there  can  be  no 
serious  question  that  this  popular  assumption  is  errone- 
ous and  that  national  characteristics,  at  any  rate  all  those 
that  distinguish  the  peoples  of  the  European  countries, 
are  in  the  main  the  expressions  of  different  traditions. 
There  are  innate  differences  of  mental  constitution  be- 
tween the  races  and  sub-races  of  men  and  between  the 
peoples   of   the   European   countries;   and   these   innate 

*  The  last  century  has  seen  a  great  change  in  respect  to  the 
force  with  which  his  immediate  social  environment  bears  upon 
the  individual ;  but,  that  the  form  of  each  man's  religious  belief 
is  determined  for  him  by  the  tradition  of  his  society,  was  strictly 
true  almost  without  exception  in  all  earlier  ages,  and  still  re- 
mains true  as  regards  the  mass  of  men.  There  has  been  a  sim- 
ilar weakening  as  regards  the  influence  of  political  tradition,  but 
still  it  is  roughly  true  that  "every  little  boy  and  girl  that's  born 
into  this  world  alive  is  either  a  little  liberal  or  else  a  little  con- 
servative," and  for  the  most  part  continues  so  throughout  life. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT         ZZ7 

peculiarities  are  very  important,  because  they  exert 
tlirough  long  periods  of  time  a  constant  bias  or 
moulding  influence  upon  the  growth  of  national  cultures 
and  traditions.  But,  relatively  to  the  national  pecuHari- 
ties  acquired  by  each  individual  in  virtue  of  his  partici- 
pation in  the  traditions  of  his  country,  the  innate  pe- 
culiarities are  slight  and  are  almost  completely  obscured 
in  each  individual  by  these  superimposed  acquired  char- 
acters. If  the  reader  is  inclined  to  doubt  the  truth  of 
these  statements,  let  him  make  an  effort  of  imagination 
and  suppose  that  throughout  a  period  of  half  a  century 
every  child  born  to  English  parents  was  at  once  ex- 
changed (by  the  power  of  a  magician's  wand)  for  an  in- 
fant of  the  French,  or  other  European,  nation.  Soon  af- 
ter the  close  of  this  period  the  English  nation  would  be 
composed  of  individuals  of  French  extraction,  and  the 
French  nation  of  individuals  of  English  extraction.  It 
is,  I  think,  clear  that,  in  spite  of  this  complete  exchange 
of  innate  characters  between  the  two  nations,  there  would 
be  but  little  immediate  change  of  national  characteris- 
tics. The  French  people  would  still  speak  French,  and 
the  English  would  speak  English,  with  all  the  local  di- 
versities to  which  we  are  accustomed  and  without  per- 
ceptible change  of  pronunciation.  The  religion  of  the 
French  would  still  be  predominantly  Roman  Catholic, 
and  the  English  people  would  still  present  the  same  di- 
versity of  Protestant  creeds*  The  course  of  political  in- 
stitutions would  have  suffered  no  profound  change,  the 
customs  and  habits  of  the  two  peoples  would  exhibit 
only  such  changes  as  might  be  attributed  to  the  lapse  of 
time,  though  an  acute  observer  might  notice  an  appreci- 
able approximation  of  the  two  peoples  towards  one  an- 
other in  all  these  respects.  The  inhabitant  of  France 
would  still  be  a  Frenchman  and  the  inhabitant  of  Eng- 


338  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

land  an  Englishman  to  all  outward  seeming,  save  that 
the  physical  appearance  of  the  two  peoples  would  be 
transposed.  And  we  may  go  even  further  and  assert  that 
the  same  would  hold  good  if  a  similar  exchange  of  in- 
fants were  effected  between  the  English  and  any  other 
less  closely  allied  nation,  say  the  Turks  or  the  Japanese. 
The  dominance  of  the  traditional  characters,  acquired 
by  each  generation  through  imitation,  over  innate  char- 
acters holds  good  not  only  in  respect  to  the  characters 
mentioned  above,  but  also,  though  perhaps  in  a  smaller 
degree,  in  respect  to  those  modes  of  activity  which  are 
regarded  as  essentially  the  expressions  of  individuality, 
namely,  the  various  forms  of  art-production,  of  science, 
of  literature,  of  conversation.  The  immensely  increased 
intercourse  of  peoples  characteristic  of  the  present  age 
has  already  done  much  to  obscure  these  national  dif- 
ferences and  peculiarities,  but  we  have  only  to  go  back 
to  earlier  ages  to  see  that  the  force  of  imitation  is  in 
these  fields  of  human  activity,  as  well  as  in  all  others, 
immensely  greater  than  the  force  of  individuality  or  of 
innate  peculiarities.  For,  the  further  back  we  go  in  time 
and  in  cultural  level,  the  more  strictly  and  locally  pe- 
culiar does  each  kind  of  cultural  element  appear.  So 
persistent  are  such  traditional  peculiarities  that  archseolo- 
gists  and  anthropologists  confidently  trace  the  distribu-. 
tion  and  affinities  of  extinct  peoples  and  races  throughout 
great  periods  of  time  and  large  areas  by  noting  pe- 
culiarities of  modes  of  sepulture,  of  carving,  of  building, 
of  the  shape,  size,  or  ornamentation  of  pottery,  of 
weapons,  or  of  any  other  durable  manufactured  article,  or 
even  slight  peculiarities  in  the  mode  of  laying  stones  to- 
gether to  form  a  building  of  any  kind. 
I  It  is  a  general  law  of  imitation  that  modes  of  doing 
'persist  more   obstinately   than  modes   of   thinking  and 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  339 

feeling.  Hence  the  many  remarkable  instances  of  sur-/ 
vival  of  former  stages  of  culture  generally  take  the  form 
of  practices  whose  meanings  and  original  purposes  have 
been  long  forgotten  or  completely  transformed.  One  of 
the  most  interesting  examples  of  such  vestigial  remnants 
of  an  earlier  culture  is  the  survival  of  the  forms  of  mar- 
riage by  capture  among  the  peasantry  of  various 
European  countries  up  to,  or  nearly  up  to,  the  present 
time ;  and,  in  fact,  the  practice  of  throwing  rice  and  old 
shoes  after  the  departing  bridegroom,  which  is  still  ob- 
served among  us,  is  probably  the  last  surviving  remnant 
of  the  forms  of  marriage  by  capture.  In  some  parts  of 
Europe  there  survives  a  vestige  of  another  form  of  mar- 
riage, namely,  marriage  by  purchase — the  bridegroom 
gives  to  the  parents  of  his  bride  a  few  grains  of  corn ; 
and  it  is  the  more  striking  that  the  old  practice  persists 
in  the  shape  of  this  formal  act,  where  the  actual  spirit 
of  the  transaction  has  been  transformed  into  its  opposite, 
and  the  bride  is  expected  to  bring  to  her  husband,  or  to 
buy  him  with,  a  substantial  dowry.  In  a  similar  way 
nearly  all  our  old-fashioned  village  festivals  are  sur- 
vivals of  the  practices,  the  pagan  rites  and  ceremonies, 
by  means  of  which  our  ancestors  propitiated  and  hon- 
oured the  various  powers  or  divinities  whom  they  con- 
ceived to  preside  over  the  processes  of  nature  that  most 
nearly  affected  their  welfare.  The  May-day  festival,  for 
example,  is  probably  a  survival  from  the  rites  by  means 
of  which  some  god  or  goddess  of  vegetation  was  wor- 
shipped and  propitiated ;  and  many  other  instances  might 
be  cited.^  At  the  present  time  the  transformation  of  such 
religious  rites  into  mere  holiday  festivals  may  be  ob- 

^  Cf.  especially  Professor  J.  G.  Frazer's  "Golden  Bough." 


340  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

served  in  actual  and  rapid  progress  in  various  odd  cor- 
ners of  the  world.^ 

This  tendency  of  practices  to  survive  by  continued  imi- 
tation, long  after  their  original  significance  has  been  for- 
gotten, has  had  far  more  important  effects  than  that  of 
preserving  vestiges  as  curiosities  for  the  anthropologists. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  practices  so  surviving  the 
memory  of  their  significance  have  in  many  cases  been  in- 
terpreted and  been  given  a  new  meaning  by  the  genera- 
tions that  found  themselves  performing  them  in  blind 
obedience  to  tradition ;  although,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  it  can  seldom  be  possible  to  attain  more  than  a 
speculative  probability  in  regard  to  such  transforma- 
tions and  developments'.  As  an  example  of  processes 
of  this  kind,  we  may  note  Robertson  Smith's  speculation 
to  the  effect  that  the  ever-burning  altar  fire,  which  be- 
came among  so  many  peoples  a  symbol  and  a  condition 
of  the  life  and  prosperity  of  a  people  or  a  city,  was  a  re- 
interpreted survival  of  the  fire  which  originally  was  used 
to  consume  the  parts  of  the  sacrificial  victim  too  holy  to 
be  otherwise  disposed  of.^  And  of  many  of  the  sym- 
bolical rites  of  the  higher  religions  it  has  been  shown  that 
they  may  with  some  plausibility  be  regarded  as  re-in- 
terpreted survivals  of  older  rituals. 

Dr.  A.  Beck^  goes  further,  and  argues  forcibly  that 
all,  or  most,  myths  and  dogmas,  and,  in  fact,  all  religious 
conceptions  of  the  lower  cultures,  were  arrived  at  by  this 
process  of  re-interpretation  of  survivals  of  practices  once 
of  practical  utility. 

*  The  process  was  going  on  rapidly  in  the  islands  of  the 
Torres  Straits  at  the  time  I  spent  some  months  there  ten  years 
ago.  The  natives  had  been  converted  to  Christianity  (nominally, 
at  least)  some  twenty  years  before  the  date  of  my  visit. 

^"Religion  of  the   Semites." 

^  ''Die  Nachahmvmg,"  Leipzig,  1903. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  341 

Among  some  peoples  the  conservative  power  of  imi- 
tation is,  of  course,  displayed  much  more  strongly  than 
among  others.  The  force  of  custom  is  generally  supreme 
among  peoples  at  a  low  level  of  culture.  Among  them 
the  sufficient  justification  and  supreme  sanction  of  all 
action  is  custom.  And,  even  after  a  people  has  made 
considerable  progress  in  the  scale  of  civilisation,  it  is  al- 
ways liable  to  become  fixed  and  stationary  once  more  un- 
der the  supremacy  of  tradition ;  then  no  innovation,  no 
invention  made  within  the  nation,  no  ideas  coming  from 
outside  it,  can  obtain  a  foothold  or  find  general  accept- 
ance within  it,  because  no  individual  and  no  other  peo- 
ple has  in  the  eyes  of  that  people  a  prestige  that  can  rival 
the  prestige  of  its  own  past  and  of  the  great  men  of  its 
own  past  history.  A  society,  arrived  at  a  fair  level  of 
civilisation  and  sufficiently  strongly  organised  to  resist 
violent  attacks  from  without,  may  persist  through  long 
ages  almost  unchanged,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the 
Chinese  people.  Then,  with  every  generation  that  passes 
away,  the  prestige  of  the  past  becomes  greater,  because  it 
becomes  more  deeply  shrouded  in  the  mists  and  the 
mystery  of  age ;  and  so  the  cake  of  custom  becomes  ever  I 
harder  and  more  unbreakable. 

Imitation  as  an  Agent  of  Progress 

If  imitation,  maintaining  customs  and  traditions  of 
every  kind,  is  the  great  conservative  agency  in  the  life 
of  societies,  it  plays  also  a  great  and  essential  part  in 
bringing  about  the  progress  of  civilisation.  Its  opera- 
tion as  a  factor  in  progress  is  of  two  principal  kinds: 
( I )  the  spread  by  imitation  throughout  a  people  of  ideas 
and  practices  generated  within  it  from  time  to  time 
by  its  exceptionally  gifted  members;  (2)  the  spread  by 
imitation  of  ideas  and  practices  from  one  people  to  an- 


342  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

other.  There  are  certain  features  or  laws  of  the  spread- 
ing by  imitation  that  are  common  to  these  two  forms  of 
the  process. 

The  spread  of  any  cuhure  element,  a  belief,  an  art,  a 
convention,  a  sentiment,  a  habit  or  attitude  of  mind  of 
any  kind,  tends  to  proceed  in  geometrical  progression, 
because  each  individual  or  body  of  individuals  that  imi- 
tates the  new  idea  and  embodies  it  in  practice  becomes 
an  additional  centre  of  radiation  of  that  idea  to  all  in- 
dividuals and  groups  that  come  in  contact  with  it;  and 
also  because,  with  each  step  of  the  spread  of  the  idea 
over  a  wider  area  and  to  larger  numbers  of  persons,  the 
power  of  mass-suggestion  grows  in  virtue  of  mere  num- 
bers. 

The  rapidity  of  the  spreading  of  a  culture-element  by 
imitation  among  any  people  depends  in  great  measure 
upon  two  conditions :  first,  the  density  of  population ; 
secondly,  the  degree  of  development  of  means  of  com- 
munication and  the  degree  of  use  made  of  these  means. 
These  propositions  are  so  obviously  true  that  we  need 
not  dwell  upon  them.  We  have  only  to  look  around  us 
to  see  how,  in  our  own  country  at  the  present  time,  the 
rapid  development  of  the  means  of  communication  dur- 
ing the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  so  facili- 
tated spread  by  imitation  among  our  dense  population  as 
to  bring  about  a  very  high  degree  of  uniformity  in  many 
respects.  Local  dialects  are  rapidly  passing  away,  and 
local  peculiarities  of  dress  and  social  convention  have 
already  been  almost  obliterated,  while  local  sports,  such 
as  golf,  have  spread  in  a  few  years  throughout  the 
country.  The  rate  of  spreading  of  trivial  passing  fash- 
ions is  marvellous — a  new  way  of  shaking  hands,  the 
fashion  of  dropping  the  "g"  and  saying  "Good  mornin'," 
the  shape  and  size  of  ladies'  hats  or  a  style  of  wearing 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  343 

the  hair,  such  games  as  ping-pong  and  diabolo — all  these 
and  a  hundred  other  fashions  suddenly  and  mysteriously 
appear  and,  having  in  a  few  months  ravaged  the  whole 
country  like  deadly  pestilences,  disappear  as  suddenly  as 
they  came.  In  almost  all  such  cases  imitation  and  contra- 
imitation  work  strongly  together ;  each  victim  is  moved 
not  only  by  the  prestige  of  those  whom  he  imitates,  but 
also  by  the  desire  to  be  different  from  the  mass  who  have 
not  yet  adopted  the  fashion.  And  it  is  owing  to  this 
strong  element  of  contra-imitation  that  these  trivial  fash- 
ions are  usually  so  fleeting;  for,  as  soon  as  the  fashion 
has  spread  to  a  certain  proportion  of  the  total  popula- 
tion, the  operation  of  contra-imitation  is  reversed  and 
begins  to  make  for  the  abolition  of  the  fashion  and  its 
supplanting  by  some  other — the  mistress  cannot  possibly 
continue  to  wear  the  new  shape  of  hat,  however  becom- 
ing to  her,  because  her  maids  and  her  humbler  neigh- 
bours have  begun  to  imitate  it. 

These  trivial  fashions  generally  pass  away  completely. 
But  all  new  ideas  that  spread  by  imitation  must  first  be- 
come fashions,  before  they  can  become  embodied  in 
tradition  as  customs ;  and  the  easy  catching-on  and 
rapid  spread  of  new  fashions  are  sure  indications  that 
the  culture  of  a  people  is  mobile  and  plastic,  that  it  is 
ready  and  likely  to  embody  new  features  in  its  cus- 
toms, behef s,  and  institutions,  and  so  to  undergo  change ; 
though  such  change  is  not  necessarily  or  always  progress 
towards  a  better  state  of  civilisation  or  of  social  organisa- 
tion. 

Imitation  modifies  a  people's  civilisation  in  one  of  two 
ways — by  substitution  or  by  accumulation ;  that  is  to  say, 
the  new  culture-element,  spreading  by  imitation  among 
a  people,  either  conflicts  with,  drives  out,  and  supplants 
some  older  traditional  element,  or  constitutes  an  exten- 


344  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

sion,  complication,  and  enrichment  of  the  existing  tradi- 
tion. Thus  a  language  or  a  religious  system  may  be  imi- 
tated by  one  people  from  another,  and  may  completely 
supplant  the  indigenous  language  or  religion.  But  more 
commonly  it  becomes  worked  up  with  the  indigenous 
language,  or  religion,  enriching  it  and  rendering  it  more 
complex  and  more  adequate  to  the  needs  of  the  people; 
as  when,  for  example,  the  Norman-French  language  was 
largely  imitated  by  the  English  people,  and  so  became  in 
large  part  incorporated  in  the  English  language;  or  as 
when  the  religion  of  Buddha  was  adopted  by  the  Jap- 
anese people,  partially  fusing  with,  rather  than  supplant- 
ing, their  national  Shinto  religion  of  ancestor-worship. 

An  idea  or  practice  that  has  once  begun  to  be  imitated 
by  a  people  tends  to  spread  to  the  maximum  extent  pos- 
sible under  the  given  conditions  of  society ;  and  then  the 
custom  or  institution  in  which  it  has  become  embodied 
tends  to  persist  indefinitely  with  this  maximum  degree 
of  intensity  and  diffusion ;  and  it  only  recedes  or  dis- 
appears under  the  influence  of  some  newly  introduced 
antagonistic  rival.  In  illustration  of  this  law  we  may 
cite  tea-drinking,  tobacco-smoking,  or  lawn  tennis.  It  is 
when  imitation  of  any  idea  has  reached  this  saturation 
point  or  degree  of  maximum  diffusion,  that  the  statis- 
tician shows  numerically  the  constancy  of  the  occurrence 
of  its  external  manifestations,  and  cites  his  figures  to 
prove  that  the  actions  of  man  are  as  completely  deter- 
mined and  as  predictable  as  the  motions  of  the  heavenly 
bodies. 

The  imitation  of  peoples  follows  the  fundamental  law 
of  all  imitation — the  law,  namely,  that  the  source  from 
which  the  impression  comes  is  one  enjoying  prestige,  is 
an  individual  or  collective  personality  that  is  stronger, 
more  complex,  or  more  highly  developed,  and  therefore 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT         345 

to  some  extent  mysterious,  not  completely  ejective,  to 
the  imitators.  Whether  the  ideas  of  an  individual  shall 
be  accepted  by  his  fellow-countrymen  depends  not  so 
much  upon  the  nature  of  those  ideas  as  upon  the  degree 
of  prestige  which  that  individual  has  or  can  secure.  The 
founders  of  new  religions  have  always  secured  prestige, 
partly  by  their  personal  force  and  character,  partly  by 
acquiring  a  reputation  for  supernatural  powers  by  means 
of  falling  occasional!}'  into  trance  or  ecstasy,  or  by  the 
working  of  miracles,  or  in  virtue  of  a  reputed  miraculous 
origin,  or  by  all  of  these  together.  A  great  general,  hav- 
ing secured  prestige  by  his  military  exploits,  may  then, 
like  the  first  Napoleon,  impress  his  ideas  of  social  or- 
ganisation upon  a  whole  people.  A  statesman,  having  se- 
cured prestige  by  his  eloquence  and  parliamentary  skill, 
can  then  set  the  tone  of  political  life,  and,  under  the  two- 
party  system,  can  make  approximately  one  half  of  the 
people  of  his  country  accept  his  ideas  almost  without 
question.  Of  this,  two  very  striking  illustrations  have 
recently  been  afforded  by  English  political  changes — the 
acceptance  of  Gladstone's  "Home  Rule"  idea  and  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain's  idea  of  Protection.  If  the  latter  idea 
should  become  generally  accepted,  it  will  be  a  most  strik- 
ing instance  of  social  imitation  on  a  great  scale.  Ten 
years  ago  the  dogma  of  Free  Trade  was  universally  ac- 
cepted in  this  country,  save  by  a  few  sceptics,  who  for 
lack  of  prestige  could  get  no  hearing;  yet  now  half,  or 
nearly  half,  the  country  clamours  for  Protection.  And 
this  great  change  is  almost  entirely  due  to  the  influence 
of  one  self-reliant  man  of  established  prestige. 

But  originality  is  a  very  rare  quality,  and  still  more 
rarely  is  it  combined  with  the  moral  and  physical  and 
social  advantages  necessary  for  the  acquisition  of  high 
prestige ;  hence,  if  the  progress  of  each  nation  took  place 


346  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

only  by  the  acceptance  of  the  ideas  of  its  own  great  men, 
progress  would  have  been  very  much  slower  than  it 
actually  has  been. 

The  imitation  of  one  people  by  another  has  been  a 
principal  condition  of  the  progress  of  civilisation  in  all 
its  stages,  but  more  especially  in  its  later  stages.  The 
people  that  is  imitated  by  another  is  always  one  of  more 
highly  evolved  civilisation  or  of  greater  skill  and  power 
in  the  use  of  the  particular  idea  or  institution  that  is  imi- 
tated. The  most  striking  example  of  this  process  af- 
forded by  history  is  the  imitation  of  the  Romans  by  the 
peoples  of  Western  Europe  whom  they  conquered,  and, 
at  a  later  period,  by  the  peoples  by  whom  they  were  con- 
quered. The  immense  prestige  of  the  Romans  enabled 
them  to  continue  to  impress  their  language,  their  religion, 
their  laws,  their  architecture,  and  all  the  principal 
features  of  their  material  civilisation  upon  these  peoples, 
even  when  their  military  power  had  declined.  On  the 
other  hand,  although  the  Romans  conquered  the  Grecian 
world,  they  were  not  imitated  by  it ;  but  rather  them- 
selves became  the  imitators  in  respect  to  most  of  the 
higher  elements  of  culture ;  for  the  prestige  of  Greece  in 
respect  to  all  forms  of  art  and  literature  was  greater 
than  that  of  Rome. 

The  imitation  of  Western  Europe  by  Japan  is,  of 
course,  the  most  striking  instance  of  modern  times.  And 
this  case  is  unique  in  that  the  imitation  is  in  the  main 
self-conscious  and  deliberate,  whereas  in  all  former  ages 
national  imitation  has  been  largely  of  lower  forms.  For 
in  national  as  in  individual  imitation  we  have  to  recog- 
nise very  different  modes  of  imitation,  ranging  from  the 
immediate  unreflecting  acceptance  of  a  mode  of  thought 
or  action  to  its  adoption  by  an  organised  national  effort 
of  collective  volition  after  careful  deliberation. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  347 

Perhaps  the  great  influence  of  national  imitation  on 
the  progress  of  civilisation  is  illustrated  most  clearly  by 
the  study  of  national  arts,  especially  of  architecture.  The 
distinctive  forms  of  art  of  each  nation  can,  almost  with- 
out exception,  be  traced  back  to  two  or  more  ancestral 
sources,  from  the  blending  and  adaptation  of  which  the 
new  national  art  has  resulted.  The  work  of  archjeologists 
largely  consists  in  tracing  these  streams  of  influence  and 
the  results  of  their  blendings. 

The  further  back  we  go  towards  periods  of  simpler 
civilisation,  the  more  striking  becomes  the  evidence  of 
diffusion  of  ideas  by  imitation.  For,  in  the  simpler 
civilisations  of  past  ages,  ideas  were  fewer  and,  there- 
fore, of  greater  individual  importance.  We  find,  for  ex- 
ample, evidence  of  the  almost  world-wide  diffusion  of 
certain  myths — of  which  a  notable  example  has  been 
worked  out  in  detail  by  Mr.  Hartland  in  his  "Legend  of 
Perseus."  And  this  wide  diffusion  of  myths  constitutes, 
perhaps,  the  most  striking  illustration  of  imitation  on  a 
great  scale,  because  in  this  case  the  operation  of  imitation 
is  not  complicated  by  any  material,  or  other  definite  social, 
advantages  or  disadvantages  resulting  from  or  accom- 
panying it  on  the  part  of  the  imitated  or  of  the  imitating 
people. 

The  same  is,  perhaps,  less  strictly  true  of  such  cus- 
toms as  peculiar  modes  of  sepulture,  e.g.,  burning  or 
mound-burial.  But  the  process  of  imitation  has  achieved 
its  most  important  results  in  the  case  of  the  great  dis- 
coveries that  have  increased  man's  power  over  nature 
and  constituted  essential  steps  in  the  evolution  of  civilisa- 
tion— agriculture,  the  domestication  of  animals,  the  use 
of  the  arch  and  dome  in  building,  of  the  bow  and  of  gun- 
powder in  warfare,  of  the  wheel  in  locomotion,  the  art 
of  printing,  of  glass-making,  the  application  of  steam  as 


348  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

a  substitute  for  other  forms  of  power;  each  of  these  has 
been  discovered  in  some  one  or  two  places  only,  has 
been  first  applied  among  some  one  or  two  peoples  only, 
and  has  been  diffused  by  imitation  throughout  the  world. 

Our  present  civilisation — so  rich  and  complex  in  lan- 
guage, in  laws,  in  science  and  art,  in  literature,  in  in- 
stitutions and  material  resources — is,  then,  the  outcome, 
not  of  the  original  discoveries  and  ideas  of  men  of  our 
own  race,  or  of  any  one  people,  but  of  the  peoples  of  the 
whole  world.  No  one  of  the  leading  European  nations 
has  created  its  own  civilisation,  but  each  one  has  rather 
appropriated  the  various  elements  of  its  culture  from  all 
the  peoples  of  the  earth,  adapting  them  and  combining 
them  to  meet  its  special  needs,  and  itself  contributing  a 
small  though  important  part  to  the  whole. 

There  is  one  rule  or  law  which,  as  M.  Tarde  has 
pointed  out,  holds  good  of  international  collective  imi- 
tation, but  not  of  individual  imitation.  It  is  that,  as 
Tarde  expresses  it,  such  imitation  proceeds  from  with- 
in outwards;  that  is  to  say,  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of 
a  people  are  first  imitated  by  another,  and,  not  until  they 
have  become  widely  spread  and  established,  are  the  forms 
in  which  they  are  externalised,  or  expressed  and  em- 
bodied, imitated  also.  Thus,  in  the  greater  instances  of 
national  imitation,  for  example,  the  imitation  of  British 
parliamentary  institutions  by  other  nations,  there  occurs 
first  a  period  during  which  the  ideas  and  sentiments 
underlying  them  are  imitated;  and  it  is  not  until  this 
assimilation  of  ideas  has  passed  beyond  the  stage  of 
fashion  and  they  have  become  a  part  of  the  national 
tradition,  that  effective  imitation  of  the  institutions  them- 
selves is  possible.  If  such  institutions  are  imposed  upon 
a  people  by  authority  before  this  stage  of  assimilation 
has  been  reached,  the  institutions  will  be  liable  to  break 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  349 

down  hopelessly.  Hence  the  failure  of  parliamentary 
government  in  various  South  American  republics,  and  in 
Russia,  and  its  inevitable  failure  in  the  Philippine  Islands 
if  introduced  there  by  the  authority  of  the  American 
people.  It  is  in  accordance  w^ith  this  law  that  among 
civilised  peoples  the  study  of  foreign  literature,  in  which 
the  ideas  of  other  peoples  are  conveyed  most  clearly  and 
in  the  most  diffusible  form,  usually  prepares  the  way  for 
imitation  of  institutions,  arts,  laws,  and  customs.  Thus 
the  Renaissance  of  Western  Europe  was  prepared  for 
by  the  study  of  Hellenic  literature,  and  the  spread  of 
British  political  institutions  was  preceded  by  the  study 
of  the  writings  of  our  political  philosophers,  from  Hobbes 
and  Locke  to  Adam  Smith,  Bentham,  and  Mill. 

Within  any  nation  imitation  tends  always  to  spread 
from  upper  to  lower  classes,  rather  than  in  the  reverse 
direction.  This  is  due  to  the  fundamental  law  of  imi- 
tation, namely,  that  prestige  is  the  principal  condition 
that  enables  one  person  or  group  to  impress  others.  And 
in  international  imitation  this  spreading  from  above 
downwards  through  the  social  strata  is  especially  clearly 
manifested ;  for  it  is  usually  by  the  upper  classes,  or  by 
sections  of  them,  that  imitations  of  foreign  ideas  and  cus- 
toms are  originally  made,  the  further  spread  of  the 
foreign  elements  then  proceeding  by  class-imitation.  In 
this  way  aristocracies  of  many  nations  have  performed 
valuable  services  for  which  they  have  not  usually  been 
given  due  credit.  In  all  earlier  ages  royal  courts  have 
served  as  centres  for  the  reception  and  diffusion  of 
foreign  ideas.  Owing  to  the  greater  freedom  of  com- 
munication between  courts  than  between  other  parts 
of  nations,  foreign  ideas  were  more  readily  introduced 
and  assimilated  by  the  members  of  a  court,  and  from 
them  were  transmitted  to  the  rest  of  the  nation ;  whereby 


350  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

its  life  was  enriched  and  its  civilisation  advanced.  In 
this  way,  for  example,  the  court  of  Frederick  the  Great 
introduced  French  culture  to  a  relatively  backward  Prus- 
sia. 

In  recent  times  royal  courts  and  hereditary  aristocra- 
cies have  been  to  a  great  extent  superseded  in  these  func- 
tions by  the  great  capitals,  which  are  in  a  sense  their  off- 
spring. Thus  Paris  has  succeeded  to  the  French  court 
as  the  centre  of  assimilation  and  diffusion  of  foreign 
ideas,  and  its  immense  prestige  enables  it  to  impress  its 
ideas  upon  the  whole  of  France.  The  aristocracy  of  in- 
tellect, which  in  former  ages  was  usually  an  appanage  of 
the  courts  and  now  is  generally  gathered  in  the  capitals, 
plays  an  important  part  both  in  introducing  foreign  ideas 
and  in  securing  to  court  or  capital  the  prestige  which 
renders  possible  the  diffusion  of  those  ideas. 

Besides  thus  serving  as  the  means  of  introducing  and 
diffusing  foreign  ideas,  hereditary  aristocracies  and 
courts  are  enabled,  in  virtue  of  their  prestige  and  quite 
independently  of  any  merits  of  their  members,  to  secure 
another  important  advantage  to  nations,  namely,  by  set- 
ting a  common  standard,  which  is  accepted  for  imitation 
by  all  classes  of  the  people,  they  make  for  homogeneity 
of  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  the  people ;  and  this  is  a 
great  condition  of  national  strength.  It  is,  then,  per- 
haps, no  mere  coincidence  that  the  progressive  nations 
have  been  the  nations  whose  social  organisation  com- 
prises an  hereditary  aristocracy  and  a  hierarchy  of 
classes;  whereas  the  unprogressive  nations,  those  which 
though  strongly  organised  have  ceased  to  progress,  are 
those  which  have  had  no  native  aristocracy,  or  have  been 
organised  on  the  caste  system — a  system  which  precludes 
class-imitation.  This  impossibility  of  class-imitation  un- 
der a  strict  caste  system  is,  no  doubt,  one  of  the  principal 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  351 

conditions  of  the  stagnation  of  the  Brahmanic  civilisa- 
tion of  India.  And  the  backwardness  of  Russia  may  be 
ascribed  in  large  measure  to  the  same  condition ;  for  there 
the  conquering  northmen,  the  Varegs,  established  a  mili- 
tary and  bureaucratic  aristocracy  which  has  remained 
relatively  ineffective  in  civilising  the  masses  of  Slav 
peasantry,  owing  to  the  lack  of  any  middle  classes  by 
whom  the  aristocrats  might  have  been  imitated.  The 
stationary  state  of  the  civilisation  of  China,  and  the  great 
difference  as  regards  the  rapidity  of  permeation  by 
European  ideas  between  the  Chinese  and  the  Japanese 
(who  are  closely  allied  by  blood)  must  be  ascribed  in 
great  measure  to  the  absence  of  an  hereditary  native 
aristocracy  among  the  Chinese.  For  in  Japan  a  native 
aristocracy  of  great  prestige  has  in  recent  years  imitated 
the  ideas  of  Western  civilisation  and,  by  impressing 
these  foreign-gathered  ideas  and  institutions  upon  the 
mass  of  the  people,  has  produced  and  is  still  producing  a 
very  rapid  advance  of  Japanese  civilisation  in  many  im- 
portant respects.  Whereas  in  China  there  exists  no  native 
aristocracy — for  the  Manchu  nobles  are  regarded  as  bar- 
barian usurpers  and  have  not  the  prestige,  even  if  they 
had  the  will,  to  play  the  same  role  as  the  aristocratic  class 
of  Japan ;  and  the  governing  class,  which  consists  of  men 
of  letters  chosen  by  examination  from  among  all  classes 
of  the  people,  has  no  hereditary  class-prestige,  and  there- 
fore has  but  little  power  of  impressing  upon  the  people 
the  ideas  which  it  has  acquired  from  Western  civilisa- 
tion. 

In  England  the  influence  of  the  hereditary  aristocracy 
in  securing  homogeneity  of  national  thought,  sentiment, 
and  custom,  has  been  very  great.  An  Englishman  no- 
toriously loves  a  lord  and  imitates  him;  and,  though  this 
national  snobbishness  lends  itself  to  ridicule  and  has  its 


352  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

bad  aspects,  especially  perhaps  in  that  it  has  done  much 
to  abolish  the  picturesque  local  and  class  differences  of 
speech  and  manners  and  dress,  it  has  yet  aided  greatly 
in  making  the  English  people  the  most  mentally  homo- 
geneous nation  in  the  world,  and  so  in  bringing  it  further 
than  any  other  along  the  path  of  evolution  of  a  national 
self-consciousness  and  a  truly  national  will. 

Contra-imitation  demands  a  few  words  of  separate 
notice.  It  plays  a  considerable  part,  as  Tarde  has  pointed 
out,  in  rendering  societies  homogeneous.  Some  small 
societies  or  associations  of  cranks  and  faddists  owe  their 
existence  chiefly  to  its  operation.  In  national  societies 
also  it  is  operative,  especially  strongly  perhaps  in  the 
English  nation.  Most  Englishmen  would  scorn  to  kiss 
and  embrace  one  another  or  to  gesticulate  freely,  if  only 
because  Frenchmen  do  these  things ;  they  would  not  wear 
their  hair  either  long  or  very  closely  cropped,  because 
Germans  do  so ;  they  would  not  have  a  conscript  army 
or  universal  military  training,  because  nearly  every  other 
European  nation  has  them.  The  Chinese  people  shows 
how  contra-imitation  may  operate  as  a  considerable  con- 
servative power  in  a  people  among  whom  it  is  strongly 
developed.  It  prevents  or  greatly  retards  their  assimila- 
tion by  imitation  of  foreign  ideas,  and  at  the  same  time 
it  confirms  them  in  the  maintenance  of  those  practices, 
such  as  the  wearing  of  the  queue,  by  means  of  which  they 
make  themselves  visibly  distinguished  from  all  other 
peoples. 

Play 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  anything  of  the  social- 
ising influence  of  the  play  tendency.  It  is  obvious  that 
even  its  cruder  manifestations,  athletic  contests  and 
games  of  all  sorts,  not  only  exert  among  us  an  impor- 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  353 

tant  influence  in  moulding  individuals,  preparing  them 
for  social  life,  for  co-operation,  for  submission,  and  for 
leadership,  for  the  postponement  of  individuals  to  col- 
lective ends,  but  also  are  playing  no  inconsiderable  part 
in  shaping  the  destinies  of  the  British  Empire,  by  en- 
couraging a  friendly  intercourse  and  rivalry  between  its 
widely  scattered  parts,  and  by  keeping  the  various  parts 
present  to  the  consciousness  of  each  other  part.  Wher- 
ever games  have  been  customary,  they  must  have  exerted 
similar  socialising  influences  in  some  degree.  The 
modern  Olympic  games  (in  this  respect  resembling 
those  of  ancient  Greece),  and  the  many  international 
sporting  contests  of  the  present  time,  are  doing  something 
to  bring  nations  into  more  sympathetic  relations,  and  may 
yet  do  much  more  in  this  direction. 

The  play  impulse  is  usually  regarded  as  one  of  the 
principal  roots  of  artistic  production.  In  so  far  as  this 
is  the  case,  it  has  its  share  in  the  socialising  influences  of 
art,  which  are  so  great  and  so  obvious  that  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  mention  them.  The  works  of  art  produced 
within  a  nation  direct  the  attention  of  individuals  to- 
wards certain  aspects  of  life  and  nature,  and  teach  them 
all  to  experience  the  same  emotions  in  face  of  these 
aspects.  In  this  way  they  tend  to  the  increase  of  mutual 
understanding  and  sympathy,  and  they  further  that 
homogeneity  of  mind  which  is  an  essential  condition  of 
the  development  of  the  collective  mental  life  of  a  people. 

In  a  similar  way  art  tends  to  soften  and  socialise  the 
relations  between  nations.  When  of  two  nations  each 
has  learnt  to  appreciate  and  admire  the  art-products  of 
the  other,  the  gulf  between  them  is  bridged  over  and  a 
firm  foundation  for  mutual  sympathy  and  regard  is  laid. 
As  a  prominent  instance,  consider  how  greatly  the  art 
of  the  Japanese  has  facilitated  their  entrance  into  the 


354  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

exclusive  circle  of  civilised  and  progressive  peoples. 
Or  again,  consider  how  great  an  influence  towards 
European  solidarity  is  exerted  by  the  common  admira- 
tion of  the  nations  of  Europe  for  the  sculpture  of 
ancient  Greece,  for  the  music  of  modern  Germany, 
the  Gothic  architecture  of  France  and  England,  the 
paintings  of  Italy. 

Habit 

Of  the  great  general  tendencies  common  to  the  minds 
of  all  men  of  all  ages,  the  last  of  our  list  in  Section  I. 
was  the  tendency  for  all  mental  processes  to  become 
facilitated  by  repetition,  the  tendency  to  the  formation 
of  habits  of  thought  and  action  which  became  more 
and  more  fixed  in  the  individual  as  he  grows  older;  and 
the  consequent  preference,  increasing  greatly  in  each 
individual  with  advancing  age,  for  the  familiar  and  the 
dislike  of  all  that  is  novel  in  more  than  a  very  moderate 
degree. 

It  was  said  above  that  imitation  is  the  great  con- 
servative tendency  of  society,  because  it  leads  each 
generation  to  adopt  with  but  little  change  the  mass  of 
customs  and  traditions  of  the  preceding  generation. 
But  imitation  is  conservative  in  virtue  only  of  the  co- 
operation of  the  tendency  we  are  now  considering. 
For  this  tendency  sets  narrow  limits  to  that  other 
tendency  of  imitation — the  tendency  to  produce  social 
changes  by  the  introduction  into  any  class  or  people 
of  the  ways  of  thought  and  action  of  other  classes  or 
peoples.  It  is  this  tendency  which  secures  that  each 
generation  imitates  chiefly  its  predecessor  rather  than 
any  foreign  models ;  for  the  native,  and  local,  and  class 
ways  of  thought,  feehng,  and  action  are  the  models  first 
presented  to  the  child ;  under  their  influence  the  earliest 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  355 

habits  are  formed,  and  a  strong  bias  is  determined;  so 
that,  by  the  time  the  individual  comes  under  the  influence 
of  foreign  models,  he  is  already  moulded  to  the  pattern 
of  his  nation,  his  class,  his  locality,  and  is  but  little 
capable  of  radical  change ;  that  is  to  say,  in  virtue  of 
habits  formed  on  the  pattern  of  his  class  and  nation,  he  is 
already  refractory  to  the  influence  of  foreign  models, 
save  in  a  small  degree.  In  short,  the  formation  of  habits 
by  the  individuals  of  each  generation  is  an  essential  con- 
dition of  the  perpetuation  of  custom,  and  custom  is  the 
principal  condition  of  all  social  organisation. 

One  point  is  worth)^  of  special  notice  in  this  con- 
nection. The  prevalence  of  certain  conditions  of  life, 
of  certain  types  of  culture  and  modes  of  occupation, 
within  a  society  are  favourable  to  the  influence  of  the 
elder  members  of  the  society,  while  other  conditions  are 
unfavourable  to  their  influence.  Thus,  the  mode  of  life 
of  pastoral  peoples,  especially  of  pastoral  nomads,  is 
eminently  favourable  to  the  influence  and  authority  of 
the  elder  men ;  their  long  experience  renders  their 
judgments  highly  valuable  in  all  that  concerns  the 
welfare  of  the  herds,  and  their  bodily  infirmity  does 
not  diminish  this  value.  On  the  other  hand,  among 
tribes  of  people  much  given  to  warfare  the  physical 
vigour  and  the  bold  initiative  of  youth  are  high  qualifi- 
cations for  leadership ;  hence  the  influence  of  the  elders 
is  relatively  less.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  societies  of 
the  former  kind  are  in  general  extremely  stable  and 
conservative.  They  develop  a  patriarchal  system,  and 
under  the  conservative  influence  of  their  patriarchs  they 
remain  unchanged  for  long  ages.  There  are  pastoral 
nomads  still  existing  under  a  social  organisation  which 
has  remained  unchanged  since  the  dawn  of  history  and, 
not  improbably,  from  a  much  more  remote  period.     On 


SS^  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  other  hand,  the  warlike  peoples  are  much  more  liable 
to  change.  We  have  already  seen  that  they  have  been 
the  most  progressive  peoples;  and  their  progress  has 
been  due  in  part,  no  doubt,  to  the  effects  of  military 
group-selection  and  to  the  moralising  influences  of  war, 
but  in  part  also  to  their  less  conservative  character 
which  they  owe  to  the  diminished  influence  of  the  older, 
and  therefore  more  conservative,  individuals. 

The  tendency  to  the  formation  of  habits,  which  per- 
vades every  function  of  the  mind,  exerts  in  yet  another 
way  an  immense  influence  on  private  life,  and,  perhaps, 
an  even  greater  influence  on  the  collective  life  of 
societies ;  I  refer  to  the  tendency  to  convert  means  into 
ends.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  in  very  many 
persons,  not  given  to  reflection  on  and  analysis  of 
motives,  the  ends  of  their  actions  seldom  come  clearly 
and  explicitly  to  consciousness.  Their  actions  are 
largely  determined  by  the  blind  instinctive  impulses  on 
the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  by  simple  acquiescence  in, 
and  imitation  of,  the  kinds  of  activity  they  see  going 
on  about  them.  Of  many  women  especially  is  this  true. 
Many  a  woman  who  spends  half  her  energies  in  making 
things  clean  and  tidy  and  setting  her  house  in  order 
either  never  explicitly  recognises  the  end  of  this  activity, 
namely,  domestic  comfort,  convenience,  and  happiness, 
or  else,  losing  sight  of  this  end  and  transforming  the 
means  into  an  end,  sacrifices  in  a  considerable  degree 
the  true  end  to  the  perfection  of  the  means.  With  men 
nothing  is  commoner  than  that  the  earning  of  money, 
at  first  undertaken  purely  as  means  to  an  end,  becomes 
an  end  in  itself.  So  with  all  of  us,  the  perfection  of 
powers,  whether  of  the  body  or  of  the  mind,  the  acquisi- 
tion of  learning,  of  a  good  literary  style,  or  of  any  other 
accomplishment,  is  very  apt  to  become  an  end  in  itself. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  357 

to  which  the  true  end  may  be  in  large  measure  sacri- 
ficed ;  and  some  moralists  even  expressly  commend  the 
transformation  of  such  means  into  ends. 

In  the  collective  thought  and  action  of  societies  this 
tendency  appears  even  more  strongly  than  in  private 
conduct,  and  for  this  reason — while  a  man  may  question 
the  usefulness  of  any  particular  mode  of  activity  that  is 
practiced  by  a  few  of  his  fellows  only,  he  is  less  likely 
to  raise  any  such  question  in  regard  to  any  practice  that 
he  finds  faithfully  observed  by  all  his  fellows.  The  fact 
that  all  his  fellows  observe  the  practice  is  suflficient  to 
put  it  beyond  criticism  and  to  lead  him  to  regard  it  as 
an  end  in  itself.  And  this  is  one  of  the  principal  bases 
of  custom.  The  ends  or  purposes  of  many  customs  are 
lost  in  the  mists  of  antiquity.  In  some  cases,  perhaps, 
the  end  has  never  been  clearly  defined  in  any  one  man's 
mind.  The  custom  may  have  arisen  as  a  compromise 
or  fusion  between  diverse  customs,  or  through  some 
purely  instinctive  mode  of  reaction,  or  through  per- 
verted imitation  of  some  foreign  model.  But,  however 
and  for  whatever  purpose  instituted,  a  custom  once 
established,  the  practice  of  it  always  becomes  in 
some  degree  an  end  in  itself,  and  men  are  prepared  to 
maintain  it,  often  at  great  cost  of  effort  or  discomfort, 
long  after  it  serves  any  useful  end.  Hence  the  fact  that 
meaningless  formalities  and  rites  continue  to  surround 
almost  all  ancient  institutions. 

Besides  thus  playing  its  part  as  one  of  the  conserva- 
tive forces,  this  tendency  leads  also  to  many  mistaken 
social  efforts  and  institutions,  or  to  the  undue  emphasis 
of  social  truths.  Thus,  such  things  as  liberty  and 
equality  are  seen  by  a  Rousseau  to  be  means  to  human 
happiness;  he  preaches  liberty  and  equality;  his  ideas 
are  accepted  by  the  masses,  and  liberty  and   equality 


358  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

become  for  them  ends  in  themselves,  and  all  social  well- 
being  is  for  a  time  sacrificed  to  them.  In  a  similar  way 
Free  Trade  was  preached  by  Cobden  as  a  means  to  an 
end.  The  idea  was  widely  accepted,  and  for  great 
numbers  of  men  the  means  has  become  an  end.  So 
also  by  setting  up  as  ends  liberty  and  equality,  which 
are  but  means  to  human  welfare  and  happiness,  the 
people  of  the  United  States  of  America  have  brought 
upon  themselves  the  insoluble  negro  problem;  and  the 
British  people,  in  virtue  of  the  same  tendency,  is  in 
danger  of  creating  a  similar  problem  in  South  Africa. 

Our  brief  review  of  the  social  operations  of  the 
primary  tendencies  of  the  human  mind  is  finished. 
Enough  perhaps  has  been  said  to  convince  the  reader 
that  the  life  of  societies  is  not  merely  the  sum  of  the 
activities  of  individuals  moved  by  enlightened  self- 
interest,  or  by  intelligent  desire  for  pleasure  and  aver- 
sion from  pain ;  and  to  show  him  that  the  springs  of 
all  the  complex  activities  that  make  up  the  life  of  so- 
cieties must  be  sought  in  the  instincts  and  in  the  other 
primary  tendencies  that  are  common  to  all  men  and 
are  deeply  rooted  in  the  remote  ancestry  of  the  race. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  CHAPTER  I 

THEORIES   OF   ACTION 

MY  principal  aim  in  writing  this  volume  was  to 
improve  the  psychological  foundations  of  the 
social  sciences  by  deepening  our  understanding  of  the 
principles  of  human  conduct.  In  the  three  and  a  half 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  appearance  of  its 
first  edition,  I  have  discerned  here  and  there  in  sub- 
sequent publications  what  seem  to  be  traces  of  its 
influence.  But  none  of  the  writers  who  have  criticized 
or  otherwise  referred  to  the  book  seems  to  have  noticed 
that  it  propounds  a  theory  of  action  which  is  applicable 
to  every  form  of  animal  and  human  effort,  from  the 
animalcule's  pursuit  of  food  or  prey  to  the  highest 
forms  of  moral  volition.  I  therefore  add  this  appendix 
to  the  present  edition  with  a  threefold  purpose.  First 
I  desire  to  draw  attention  to  this  theory  of  action  by 
throwing  it  into  stronger  relief ;  secondly,  I  desire  to 
present  it  in  the  form  of  a  distinct  challenge  both  to  my 
colleagues  the  psychologists,  and  especially  to  writers 
on  moral  philosophy,  to  whose  hands  the  positive  theory 
of  conduct  has  been  too  largely  confided  by  the  psycholo- 
gists ;  thirdly,  I  desire  to  help  young  students  of  psy- 
chology and  ethics  to  understand  the  relation  of  the 
theory  of  action  expounded  in  this  book  to  other 
theories  of  action  widely  current  at  the  present  time. 
The  execution  of  this  threefold  design  involves  a  some- 
what technical  and  controversial  discussion  hardly  suited 

359 


36o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

for  the  general  reader;  I  have  therefore  preferred  to 
present  it  in  the  form  of  an  appendix,  rather  than  to 
insert  it  in  the  body  of  the  text. 

I  will  first  state  dogmatically  and  explicitly  the  theory 
of  action  which  is  implied  throughout  this  volume,  and 
will  then  justify  it  by  showing  the  inadequacy  of  the 
other  theories  of  action  that  have  been  most  widely 
accepted. 

Human  conduct,  which  in  its  various  spheres  is  the 
topic  with  which  all  the  social  sciences  are  concerned,  is 
a  species  of  a  wider  genus,  namely,  behaviour.  Con- 
duct is  the  behaviour  of  self-conscious  and  rational 
beings;  it  is  the  highest  type  of  behaviour;  and,  if  we 
desire  to  understand  conduct,  we  must  first  achieve  some 
adequate  conception  of  behaviour  in  general  and  must 
then  discover  in  what  ways  conduct,  the  highest  type, 
differs  from  all  the  lower  types  of  behaviour. 

We  sometimes  speak  of  the  behaviour  of  inert  or 
inorganic  things,  such  things  as  tools,  or  weapons,  or 
even  the  weather.  But  in  such  cases  we  usually 
recognize  more  or  less  clearly  that  we  are  using  the 
word  playfully — we  playfully  regard  the  object  as  alive 
— and  the  ground  of  our  doing  so  is  generally  that  it 
seems  to  set  itself  in  opposition  to  our  will,  and  to  strive 
to  frustrate  or  hinder  the  accomplishment  of  our 
purpose.  It  is  generally  recognized  that  the  word 
"behaviour"  implies  certain  peculiarities  which  are  only 
found  in  the  movements  of  living  things.  These 
peculiarities  are  the  marks  of  life ;  wherever  we  observe 
them,  we  confidently  infer  life.  We  form  our  notion  of 
behaviour  by  the  observation  of  the  movements  of  liv- 
ing things ;  and,  in  order  to  explicate  this  notion,  we 
must  discover  by  what  marks  behaviour  is  distinguished 
from  all  merely  physical  or  mechanical  movements.     If 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  361 

in  imagination  we  construct  a  scale  of  types  of  behaviour 
ranging  from  the  simplest  to  the  most  complex,^  we  find 
that  at  all  levels  of  complexity  behaviour  presents  four 
peculiar  marks. 

1.  The  creature  does  not  merely  move  in  a  certain 
direction,  like  an  inert  mass  impelled  by  external  force ; 
its  movements  are  quite  incapable  of  being  described  in 
the  language  with  which  we  describe  mechanical  move- 
ments; we  can  only  describe  them  by  saying  that  the 
creature  strives  persistently  towards  an  end.  For  its 
movements  do  not  cease  when  it  meets  with  obstacles, 
or  when  it  is  subjected  to  forces  which  tend  to  deflect 
it :  such  obstacles  and  such  opposition  rather  provoke 
still  more  forcible  striving,  and  this  striving  only 
terminates  upon  the  attainment  of  its  natural  end ; 
which  end  is  generally  some  change  in  its  relation  to 
surrounding  objects,  a  change  that  subserves  the  life 
of  the  individual  creature  or  of  its  species. 

2.  The  striving  of  the  creature  is  not  merely  a  per- 
sistent pushing  in  a  given  direction ;  though  the  striving 
persists  when  obstacles  are  encountered,  the  kind  and 
direction  of  movement  are  varied  again  and  again  so 
long  as  the  obstacle  is  not  overcome.  Behaviour  is  a 
persistent  trial  or  striving  towards  an  end,  with,  if 
necessary,  variation  of  the  means  employed  for  its 
attainment. 

3.  In  behaviour  the  whole  organism  is  involved. 
Every  action  that  we  recognize  as  an  instance  of  be- 
haviour is  not  merely  a  partial  reaction,  such  as  the  re- 
flex movement  of  a  Hmb,  which  seems  to  be  of  a  me- 
chanical or  quasi-mechanical  character;  rather,  in  every 

*  For  such  a  scale  of  instances  of  behaviour  I  would  refer  the 
reader  to  my  volume  in  the  Home  University  Library,  "Psy- 
chology, the  Study  of  Behaviour." 


362  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

case  of  behaviour,  the  energy  of  the  whole  organism 
seems  to  be  concentrated  upon  the  task  of  achieving  the 
end:  all  its  parts  and  organs  are  subordinated  to  and  co- 
ordinated with  the  organs  primarily  involved  in  the 
activity. 

4.  The  fourth  mark  of  behaviour  is  equally  character- 
istic and  probably  equally  universal  with  the  other 
three,  though  it  is  less  easily  observed;  it  is,  namely, 
that,  although,  on  the  recurrence  of  a  situation  which  has 
previously  evoked  behaviour,  the  creature  may  behave 
again  in  a  very  similar  manner,  yet  the  activity  is  not 
repeated  in  just  the  same  fashion  as  on  the  previous 
occasion  (as  is  the  case  with  mechanical  processes,  except 
in  so  far  as  the  machine  has  been  in  some  degree  worn 
out  on  the  former  occasion)  ;  there  is  as  a  rule  some 
evidence  of  increased  efficiency  of  action,  of  better 
adaptation  of  the  means  adopted  to  the  end  sought — 
the  process  of  gaining  the  end  is  shortened,  or  in  some 
other  way  exhibits  increased  efficiency  in  subserving  the 
life  of  the  individual  or  of  the  species. 

When  we  survey  the  whole  world  of  material  things 
accessible  to  our  perception,  these  seem,  as  a  matter  of 
immediate  observation  and  apart  from  all  theories  of 
the  relation  of  mind  to  matter,  to  fall  into  two  great 
classes,  namely,  (i)  a  class  consisting  of  those  things 
whose  changes  seem  to  be  purely  physical  happenings, 
explicable  by  mechanical  principles;  (2)  a  class  of 
things  whose  changes  exhibit  the  marks  of  behaviour 
and  seem  to  be  incapable  of  mechanical  explanation, 
but  rather  to  be  always  directed,  however  vaguely,  to- 
wards an  end — that  is  to  say,  are  teleological  or  pur- 
posive ;  and  this  class  constitutes  the  realm  of  life. 

The  four  peculiarities  which,  as  we  have  seen,  charac- 
terize behaviour  are  purely  objective  or  outward  marks, 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  363 

presented  to  the  observation  of  the  onlooker.  But  to 
say  that  behaviour  is  purposive  is  to  imply  that  it  has 
also  an  inner  side  or  aspect  which  is  analogous  to,  and 
of  the  same  order  as,  our  immediate  experience  of  our 
own  purposive  activities.  We  are  accustomed  to  accept 
as  the  type  of  purposive  action  our  own  most  decidedly 
volitional  efforts,  in  which  we  deliberately  choose,  and 
self-consciously  strive,  to  bring  about  some  state  of 
affairs  that  we  clearly  foresee  and  desire.  And  it  has 
been  the  practice  of  many  writers,  accepting  such 
volitional  effort  as  the  type  of  purposive  activity,  to 
refuse  to  admit  to  the  same  category  any  actions  that 
do  not  seem  to  be  prompted  and  guided  by  clear  fore- 
sight of  the  end  desired  and  willed.  When  purposive 
activity  is  conceived  in  this  very  restricted  way,  and  is 
set  over  against  mechanical  processes,  as  process  of  a 
radically  different  type,  there  remains  the  difficulty  of 
assigning  the  place  and  affinities  of  the  lower  forms  of 
behaviour. 

One  way  of  solving  the  difficulty  thus  created  is 
that  adopted  by  Descartes,  namely,  to  assign  all  the 
lower  forms  of  behaviour  to  the  mechanical  category. 
But  this  is  profoundly  unsatisfactory  for  two  reasons : 
(i)  As  we  have  seen,  behaviour  everywhere  presents  the 
outward  marks  which  are  common  to  the  lower  forms 
of  behaviour  and  to  human  conduct,  and  which  set  it 
so  widely  apart  from  mechanical  processes;  (2)  this 
way  of  dealing  with  the  difficulty  creates  a  still  greater 
difficulty,  namely,  it  sets  up  an  absolute  breach  between 
men  and  animals,  ignoring  all  the  unmistakable  indica- 
tions of  community  of  nature  and  evolutional  continuity 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower  forms  of  life. 

The  creation  of  this  second  difficulty  has  naturally 
resulted  in  the  attempt  to  solve  it  by  forcing  the  truly 


364  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

purposive  type  of  process  into  the  mechanical  category ; 
that  is,  by  regarding  as  wholly  illusory  the  conscious- 
ness of  striving  towards  an  end  which  every  man  has 
when  he  acts  with  deliberate  purpose ;  by  assuming 
that  we  are  deceived  when  we  believe  ourselves  to  be 
real  agents  striving  more  or  less  effectively  to  determine 
the  course  of  events  and  to  shape  them  to  our  will  and 
purpose.  The  demonstration  that  this  view  is  untenable 
requires  a  very  long  and  intricate  argument,  which  can- 
not be  presented  here  even  in  briefest  outline.^  It  must 
suffice  to  say  that  the  acceptance  of  this  view  would 
be  subversive  of  all  moral  philosophy,  would  deprive  ethi- 
cal principles  and  ethical  discussion  of  all  meaning  and 
value ;  for  if  our  consciousness  of  striving  to  achieve  ends, 
to  realize  ideals,  to  live  up  to  standards  of  conduct,  if  all 
this  is  illusory,  then,  to  seek  to  determine  what  we  ought 
to  do  and  to  be,  or  to  set  up  standards  or  norms  or  ideals, 
is  wholly  futile ;  such  endeavours  can  at  best  only  serve 
to  make  us  more  acutely  aware  of  our  impotence  in  face 
of  such  ideals. 

We  can  only  avoid  this  difficulty  and  this  impasse  by 
recognizing  that  the  commonly  entertained  notion  of  pur- 
posive activity  is  too  narrow,  and  that  it  must  be  widened 
to  include  the  lower  forms  of  behaviour  as  well  as  the 
higher  forms  which  constitute  human  conduct. 

The  only  serious  objection  that  can  be  raised  to  this 
widening  of  the  notion  of  purposive  activity  is  the  con- 
tention that  the  word  "purpose"  essentially  implies  on 
the  part  of  the  agent  consciousness  of  the  goal  that  he 
seeks  to  attain,  of  the  end  he  pursues ;  it  may  be  said  that 

*To  the  presentation  of  this  argument  I  have  devoted  a  sep- 
arate volume  ("Body  and  Mind,  a  History  and  Defence  of 
Animism,"  London,  1911),  to  which  I  would  refer  any  reader 
who  desires  to  form  an  opinion  on  this  difficult  question. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  365 

it  is  only  in  so  far  as  the  agent  may  reasonably  be  re- 
garded as  clearly  conscious  of  the  goal  he  seeks  that  we 
can  claim  to  understand  in  any  sense  or  degree  how  the 
end  determines  the  course  of  the  activity,  how,  in  short, 
the  action  is  teleologically  determined.  And  it  may  be 
said,  with  truth,  that  we  are  not  warranted  in  believing 
that  the  lower  animals  are  capable  of  conceiving,  or  of 
being  in  any  way  clearly  conscious  of,  the  ends  of  their 
actions ;  and  therefore,  it  may  be  said,  it  is  illegitimate  to 
regard  the  lower  forms  of  behaviour  as  purposive  or  to 
claim  that  our  immediate  experience  of  purposive  ac- 
tivity in  any  way  enables  us  to  understand  them. 

This  objection  may  be  removed  by  the  following  con- 
siderations. Mental  process  seems  to  be  always  a  proc- 
ess of  striving  or  conation  initiated  and  guided  by  a  proc- 
ess or  act  of  knowing,  of  apprehension ;  and  this  know- 
ing or  cognition  is  always  a  becoming  aware  of  some- 
thing, or  of  some  state  of  affairs,  as  given  or  present,  to- 
gether with  an  anticipation  of  some  change.  That  is  to 
say,  mental  life  does  not  consist  in  a  succession  of  dif- 
ferent states  of  the  subject,  called  states  of  consciousness 
or  ideas  or  what  not ;  but  it  consists  always  in  an  activity 
of  a  subject  in  respect  of  an  object  apprehended,  an  ac- 
tivity which  constantly  changes  or  modifies  the  relation 
between  subject  and  object.  Now  this  change  which  is 
to  be  effected,  and  which  is  the  goal  or  end  of  action,  is 
anticipated  with  very  different  degrees  of  clearness  and 
adequacy  at  different  levels  of  mental  life.  In  many  of 
our  own  voluntary  actions  the  end  is  anticipated  or  fore- 
seen in  the  most  general  manner  only ;  to  take  a  trival  but 
instructive  instance :  you  cough  in  order  to  clear  your 
throat ;  or,  experiencing  a  slight  irritation  in  your  throat, 
you  put  out  your  hand,  take  up  a  glass  of  water,  and 
drink,  in  order  to  allay  it.     How  very  sketchy  and  ill- 


366  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

defined  may  be  your  thought  of  the  end  of  your  action ! 
And  even  in  the  execution  of  our  most  carefully  thought- 
out,  our  most  purposeful,  actions,  our  anticipatory 
thought  or  representaton  of  the  end  to  be  achieved  falls 
far  short  of  its  actual  fulness  of  concrete  detail.  The  an- 
ticipation of  the  end  of  action  is,  then,  always  more  or 
less  incomplete;  its  adequacy  is  a  matter  of  degree. 
Therefore  we  ought  not  to  assume  that  a  clear  and  full 
anticipation  or  idea  of  the  end  is  an  essential  condition  of 
purposive  action ;  and  we  have  no  warrant  for  setting  up 
the  instances  in  which  anticipation  is  least  incomplete 
as  alone  conforming  to  the  purposive  type,  and  for  set- 
ting apart  all  instances  in  which  anticipation  is  less  full 
and  definite  as  of  a  radically  different  nature. 

It  is  important  also  to  note  that  the  representation  or 
idea  of  the  end  is  not  truly  the  cause  or  determining  con- 
dition of  the  purposive  activity.  The  merely  cognitive 
process  of  representing  or  conceiving  the  end  or  the 
course  of  action  does  not  of  itself  suffice  to  evoke  the  ac- 
tion; we  can  imagine  many  possible  actions  or  ends  of 
actions,  without  carrying  them  out  or  feeling  any  inclina- 
tion to  pursue  them;  in  fact  it  often  happens  that  the 
more  clearly  we  envisage  the  end  and  course  of  a  possible 
action,  the  more  strongly  averse  to  it  do  we  become.  The 
truth  is  that  the  anticipatory  representation  of  the  end  of 
action  merely  serves  to  guide  the  course  of  action  in  de- 
tail ;  the  essential  condition  of  action  is  that  a  conative 
tendency,  a  latent  disposition  to  action,  shall  be  evoked. 
Where  the  anticipatory  representation  of  the  end  is  vague 
and  sketchy  and  general,  there  the  action  will  be  gen- 
eral, vague,  imperfectly  directed  in  detail;  where  it  is 
more  detailed  and  full,  there  action  is  more  specialized, 
more  nicely  adjusted  to  the  achievement  of  its  end. 

From  our  own  experience  v/e  are  familiar  with  ac- 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  367 

tions  in  which  anticipation  of  the  end  varies  from  that  of 
the  most  clear  and  detailed  nature  through  all  degrees  of 
incompleteness  down  to  the  most  vague  and  shadowy,  a 
mere  anticipation  of  change  of  some  undefined  kind.  We 
are  therefore  able  to  form  some  notion  of  the  inner  or 
subjective  side  of  the  action  of  animals,  even  of  those 
lowest  in  the  scale  of  organization.  Putting  aside  a  lim- 
ited number  of  animal  actions  which  owe  their  definite- 
ness  and  precision  to  guidance  at  every  point  by  new  im- 
pressions falling  from  moment  to  moment  upon  the 
sense-organs  (as  in  the  most  striking  instances  of  purely 
instinctive  action),  we  see  that,  as  we  go  down  the  scale 
of  life,  actions  become  less  precisely  guided  in  detail, 
and  present  more  and  more  the  character  of  random  or 
but  vaguely  directed  efforts ;  in  this  corresponding  to 
what  we  may  legitimately  suppose  to  be  the  increasing 
vagueness  of  the  anticipatory  representations  by  which 
they  are  guided.  The  theoretical  lower  limit  of  this 
series  would  be  what  has  been  well  called  (by  Dr.  Stout) 
anoetic  sentience ;  a  mere  feeling  or  sentience  involving  no 
objective  reference  and  giving  rise  only  to  movement  or 
effort  that  is  completely  undirected.  This  lower  limit  is 
approached  in  our  own  experience  when  we  stir  un- 
easily or  writhe  or  throw  ourselves  wildly  about,  under 
the  stimulus  of  some  vaguely  localized  internal  pain.  But 
we  do  not  ourselves  experience  the  limiting  case,  and  it 
is  questionable  whether  we  can  properly  suppo5e  it  to  be 
realized  in  the  simplest  instances  of  animal  behaviour ;  it 
seems  probable  that  the  actions  of  even  the  lowliest  ani- 
mals imply  a  vague  awareness  of  something,  together 
with  some  vague  forward  reference,  some  vague  antici- 
pation of  a  change  in  this  something. 

Knowing,  then,  is  always  for  the  sake  of  action;  the 
function  of  cognition  is  to  initiate  action  and  to  guide  it 


368  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

in  detail.  But  the  activity  implies  the  evoking,  the  com- 
ing into  play,  of  a  latent  tendency  to  action,  a  conative 
disposition ;  every  such  tendency  or  conative  disposition 
is  either  of  a  very  general  or  of  a  more  specialized  or 
specific  character;  and  each  such  conative  tendency, 
when  awakened  or  brought  into  play,  maintains  itself 
until  its  proper  or  specific  end  is  attained,  and  sustains 
also  the  course  of  bodily  and  mental  activity  required  for 
the  attainment  of  that  end.  When,  then,  any  creature 
strives  towards  an  end  or  goal,  it  is  because  it  possesses 
as  an  ultimate  feature  of  its  constitution  what  we  can 
only  call  a  disposition  or  latent  tendency  to  strive  to- 
wards that  end,  a  conative  disposition  which  is  actualized 
or  brought  into  operation  by  the  perception  (or  other 
mode  of  cognition)  of  some  object.  Each  organism  is 
endowed,  according  to  its  species,  with  a  certain  number 
and  variety  of  such  conative  dispositions  as  a  part  of  its 
hereditary  equipment  for  the  battle  of  life ;  and  in  the 
course  of  its  life  these  may  undergo  certain  modifications 
and  differentiations. 

To  attempt  to  give  any  further  account  of  the  natjre 
of  these  conative  dispositions  would  be  to  enter  upon 
a  province  of  metaphysical  speculation,  and  is  a  task  not 
demanded  of  psychology.  I  will  only  say  in  this  con- 
nection that  we  may  perhaps  describe  all  living  things  as 
expressions  or  embodiments  of  what  we  may  vaguely 
name,  with  Schopenhauer,  Will,  or,  with  Bergson,  the 
vital  impulsion  (I' elan  vital),  or,  more  simply,  life;  and 
each  specifically  directed  conative  tendency  we  may  re- 
gard as  a  differentiation  of  this  fundamental  will-to-live, 
conditioned  by  a  conative  disposition.  At  the  standpoint 
of  empirical  science,  we  must  accept  these  conative  dis- 
positions as  ultimate  facts,  not  capable  of  being  analyzed 
or  of  being  explained  by  being  shown  to  be  instances  of 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  369 

any  wider,  more  fundamental  notion.  To  adopt  this  view 
is  to  assert  that  the  facts  of  behaviour,  the  empirical 
data  of  psychology,  must  be  explained  in  terms  of  funda- 
mental conceptions  proper  to  it  as  an  independent  science. 
The  physicist  works,  and  explains  his  facts,  in  terms  of 
the  conception  of  mechanical  process,  not  necessarily 
concerning  himself  with  the  metaphysical  problem  that 
underlies  this  conception;  for  example,  he  accepts  as  an 
ultimate  fact  the  tendency  of  a  moving  mass  to  continue 
to  move  in  a  straight  line  without  change  of  velocity.  In 
a  similar  manner  the  psychologist  may  work,  and  explain 
his  facts,  in  terms  of  the  conception  of  purposive  or  ap- 
petitive process.  The  physicist  studies  mechanical  proc- 
esses of  all  kinds  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  most  gen- 
eral laws  of  mechanical  process ;  and  his  explanation  of 
any  one  fact  of  observation  consists  in  exhibiting  it  as 
an  instance  of  the  operation  of  such  general  laws ;  that 
is,  in  showing  that  it  conforms  to  the  type,  that  it  may  be 
analytically  regarded  as  a  conjunction  of  simple  mechani- 
cal processes  obeying  the  most  general  laws  of  mechan- 
ism. Just  in  the  same  way  the  psychologist  has  to  study 
appetitive  processes  of  all  kinds  and  of  all  degrees  of 
complexity,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  most  general  laws 
of  appetitive  process.  And  his  explanation  of  any  proc- 
ess of  the  kind  with  which  he  is  concerned  must  con- 
sist in  exhibiting  it  as  an  instance  of  the  operation  of 
such  general  laws  of  appetition,  in  showing  how  it  may 
be  analytically  regarded  as  a  conjunction  of  appetitions 
according  to  the  general  laws  of  appetition  that  he  has 
established.  According  to  this  view,  then,  the  acts  of 
human  beings,  all  our  volitions,  our  efforts,  our  resolu- 
tions, choices,  and  decisions,  have  to  be  explained  in 
terms  of  the  laws  of  appetition.  When,  and  not  until,  we 
can  exhibit  any  particular  instance  of  conduct  or  of  be- 


370  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

haviour  as  the  expression  of  conative  tendencies  which 
are  ultimate  constituents  of  the  organism,  we  can  claim 
to  have  explained  it. 

Owing  to  the  great  development  of  physical  science  in 
modern  times  and  to  the  immense  success  that  has  at- 
tended its  attempts  to  explain  physical  facts  in  terms  of 
the  laws  of  mechanism,  there  obtains  very  widely  at  the 
present  time  the  opinion  that  we  understand  mechanical 
process  in  some  more  intimate  sense  than  we  can  under- 
stand appetitive  process;  and  that,  therefore,  it  is  the 
business  of  all  science  to  explain  its  facts  in  terms  of  the 
laws  of  mechanism,  and  that  appetitive  processes  can 
only  be  rendered  intelligible  if  they  can  be  reduced  to  the 
mechanical  type.  But  this  is  a  delusion.  Of  the  two 
types  of  process,  we  certainly  understand  the  appetitive 
more  intimately  than  the  mechanical ;  for  we  directly  ex- 
perience appetition,  we  have  an  inside  acquaintance  with 
it,  as  well  as  acquaintance  of  the  purely  external  kind 
which  is  the  only  kind  of  acquaintance  that  we  have  with 
mechanical  process.  And  when  metaphysicians  attempt 
to  go  behind  the  distinction  of  mechanical  and  appetitive 
processes  (which  for  science  is  fundamental)  and  at- 
tempt to  show  that  processes  of  the  two  types  are  really 
of  like  nature,  the  most  plausible  view  seems  to  be  that 
v/hich  regards  mechanical  process  as  reducible  to  the  ap- 
petitive type  or  regards  it  as,  perhaps,  representing  a  de- 
gradation of  process  of  the  appetitive  type.  This,  at 
least,  is  the  view  which  has  been  and  is  maintained  by 
some  of  the  most  distinguished  metaphysicians  and  which 
seems  to  involve  less  serious  difficulties  than  the  accept- 
ance of  the  converse  view.^ 

*  The  most  thorough  and  convincing  defence  of  this  view  is  to 
be  found  in  Professor  James  Ward's  recently  published  volume 
of  Gifford  Lectures,  'The  Realm  of  Ends,"  London,  1911. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  371 

I  have  now  stated  explicitly  the  theory  of  action  which 
is  implied  by  the  doctrines  of  instinct,  of  sentiment,  and 
of  volition,  expounded  in  this  volume ;  and  it  remains  to 
justify  it  by  showing  the  inadequacy  of  other  theories  of 
action. 

The  theory  of  action  most  widely  accepted  by  psy- 
chologists at  the  present  time  is,  perhaps,  the  theory 
which  regards  all  organisms  as  merely  machines  and  all 
behaviour  as  mechanically  determined.  I  put  this  aside 
for  the  reasons  already  stated. 

Of  other  theories,  the  one  which  has  exercised  the 
greatest  influence  in  modern  speculation  is  the  theory  of 
psychological  hedonism;  this  is  the  theory  of  action 
which  was  unfortunately  adopted  by  the  founders  of 
Utilitarianism  as  the  psychological  foundation  of  all  their 
social  and  ethical  doctrines.^  It  asserts  that  the  mo- 
tive of  all  action  is  the  desire  to  obtain  increase  of  pleas- 
ure or  diminution  of  pain.  It  claims  to  be  an  empirical 
induction  from  the  undeniable  fact  that  men  do  seek 
pleasure  and  do  try  to  avoid  pain.  But  its  strange  power 
to  hold  the  allegiance  of  those  who  have  once  accepted 
it  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  it  seems  to  afiford 
a  rational  explanation  of  all  conduct,  to  show  a  sufficient 
cause  for  all  action.  Whenever  an  action  can  be  re- 
garded as  an  effort  in  pursuit  of  pleasure  or  in  avoid- 
ance of  pain,  we  seem  to  have  an  explanation  which  is 
ultimate  and  intelligible.  We  feel  no  need  to  inquire — 
Why  should  anyone  prefer  pleasure  to  pain,  or  seek  to 
gain  pleasure  and  to  avoid  pain  ?    No  other  theory  of  the 

*The  critics  of  Utilitarianism  have  concentrated  their  attack 
upon  this  false  psychological  doctrine ;  but  the  student  of  Ethics 
should  not  be  misled  into  supposing  that  the  Utilitarian  principle, 
as  the  criterion  of  the  good  or  the  right,  stands  or  falls  with 
psychological  hedonism. 


372  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

ground  of  action  seems  at  first  sight  so  self-evident  and 
satisfying. 

It  is,  no  doubt,  possible  to  show  the  fallacious  nature 
of  the  doctrine  by  careful  examination  of  our  own  mo- 
tives and  unbiassed  consideration  of  the  conduct  of  other 
men.  For  such  consideration  shows  that,  when  we  de- 
sire any  object  or  end,  as,  for  example,  food,  what  we 
normally  desire  is  the  object  or  end  itself,  not  the 
pleasure  that  may  attend  the  attainment  of  the  end.  But 
the  complexity  of  the  human  mind  is  so  great,  its  springs 
of  action  so  obscure,  that,  in  almost  every  instance  of 
human  behaviour,  it  is  possible  for  the  psychological 
hedonist  to  make  out  a  plausible  interpretation  in  terms 
of  his  theory.  Two  facts  play  into  his  hands :  first,  the 
fact  that  the  attainment  of  any  desired  object  or  goal 
brings  satisfaction  or  pleasure;  for  the  desired  object  or 
goal  can  then  be  ambiguously  described  as  a  pleasure, 
and  the  agent  can  be  said  to  have  been  moved  by  desire 
for  this  pleasure:  secondly,  the  fact  that,  even  though  a 
man  be  really  moved  by  the  desire  of  pleasure,  he  may 
choose  to  sacrifice  the  pleasure  of  the  immediate  future 
(or  even  to  suffer  pain)  in  order  to  secure  a  greater 
pleasure  at  a  later  time.  And  the  hedonist,  when  he  can- 
not plausibly  interpret  an  action — such  as  one  involving 
the  sacrifice  of  life  in  the  cause  of  duty — in  terms  of 
his  theory  in  any  other  way,  can  always  assert  that  the 
agent  was  moved  by  his  aversion  to  the  pain  of  remorse 
v/hich  he  foresees  to  be  the  consequence  of  neglect  of 
duty. 

For  these  reasons  the  easiest  and  surest  refutation  of 
the  hedonist  theory  of  action  is  provided  by  the  con- 
sideration of  animal  behaviour.  For  we  may  observe 
numberless  instances  of  action,  of  persistent  striving  to- 
wards ends,  on  the  part  of  lowly  animals  which  cannot 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  373 

be  credited  with  the  power  of  anticipating  or  desiring  the 
pleasure  that  may  accrue  from  success, 

A  second  theory  of  action,  which  claims  to  be  of 
general  validity,  ascribes  all  conation,  all  mental  and 
bodily  striving,  not  to  desire  of  future  pleasure  or  aver- 
sion from  future  pain,  but  to  the  influence  of  present 
pleasure  or  pain;  that  is  to  say,  feeling  (in  the  sense  of 
pleasure  or  pain)  is  regarded  as  an  essential  link  between 
cognition  and  conation;  it  is  maintained  that  cognition 
only  moves  us  to  action  in  so  far  as  it  evokes  in  us 
pleasurable  or  painful  feeling.  This  may  conveniently  be 
designated  the  pleasure-pain  theory  of  action.  It  is 
widely  accepted  at  the  present  time ;  it  is  more  subtle  and 
less  easily  refuted  than  the  theory  of  psychological 
hedonism,  which  is  no  longer  seriously  to  be  reckoned 
with.  The  difficulty  of  refuting  this  doctrine  arises  from 
the  fact  that  mental  process  has  almost  invariably  some 
feeling-tone,  is  coloured,  however  faintly,  with  pleasure 
or  with  pain ;  so  that  it  is  possible  to  attribute  with  some 
plausibility  almost  every  instance  of  activity  to  the  feel- 
ing which  accompanies  and  qualifies  it.  This  theory 
rightly  recognizes  that  what  we  normally  desire  and 
strive  after  is  some  object  or  end  which  is  not  pleasure 
itself,  though  its  attainment  may  be  accompanied  by 
pleasurable  feeling;  that,  for  example,  when  we  are 
hungry  we  normally  desire  food  rather  than  the  pleasure 
of  eating.  But  it  asserts  that  the  moving  power  of  the 
desire,  that  which  prompts  us  to  action,  is  the  feeling,  the 
pleasure  or  pain,  which  we  experience  at  the  moment  of 
desire  and  of  action;  that,  when  we  desire  food,  that 
which  prompts  us  to  strive  after  it  is  neither  the  pleasure 
which  we  anticipate  from  eating  nor  the  pain  which  we 
anticipate  from  fasting,  but  the  pleasure  which  arises 


374  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

from  the  thought  of  eating  or  the  pain  which  immedi- 
ately quahfies  the  sensation  of  hunger. 

The  last  sentence  indicates  the  line  of  criticism  by 
which  this  theory  may  be  shown  to  be  untenable.  We 
must  ask — Is  the  hungry  man  prompted  to  seek  food  by 
the  pleasure  of  the  thought  of  eating  or  by  the  pain  of 
hunger?  Some  of  the  pleasure-pain  theorists  incline  to 
the  one  view,  some  to  the  other,  and  some^  boldly  solve 
the  difficulty  by  accepting  both,  asserting  that  desire 
always  involves  both  pain  and  pleasure.  These  last  as- 
sert, for  example,  that  the  desire  of  food  is  pleasant  in 
so  far  as  it  is  or  involves  the  thought  of  eating,  and  that 
it  is  at  the  same  time  painful  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  state  of 
unsatisfied  appetite  or  craving.  The  assumption  that  con- 
sciousness may  be  at  any  one  moment  both  pleasurably 
and  painfully  toned  is  one  of  very  doubtful  validity;  but 
it  is  a  further  and  perhaps  more  serious  objection  to 
this  view,  that  the  pleasure  and  the  pain  which  are  as- 
sumed to  coexist  should  be  assumed  also  to  prompt  to 
the  same  kind  of  action.  And  if  the  pleasure  and  the 
pain  are  assumed  to  alternate  in  consciousness,  rather 
than  to  coexist,  the  same  difficulty  remains.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  every  kind  of  desire  or  striving  may  be 
pleasurable  or  painful — pleasurable  in  so  fa^  as  it  pro- 
gresses towards  its  goal,  painful  in  so  far  as  it  is 
thwarted;  and  yet  the  desire  and  the  striving  may  per- 
sist while  the  feeling  tone  alternates  from  the  extreme 
of  pleasure  to  extreme  of  pain.  Thus  the  desire  of  the 
lover  persists,  whether  he  be  raised  to  the  height  of  bliss 
by  the  expectation  of  success,  or  cast  down  to  depths  of 
torment  by  a  rebuff. 

If  we  consider  the  animals,  we  shall  again  be  led  to 

*Prof.  J.   H.   Muirhead,   for  example,  in  his  "Elements  of 
Ethics." 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  375 

the  true  view.  It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  we  can- 
not attribute  to  the  lower  animals  "ideas,"  or  any  power 
of  clearly  representing,  or  thinking  of,  things  not  pres- 
ent to  the  senses;  therefore  we  cannot  attribute  their 
actions  to  the  pleasure  of  the  idea  of  attaining  the  end 
pursued;  yet  such  animals  strive  under  the  spur  of 
hunger,  as  we  say,  and  of  other  appetites.  Therefore, 
in  the  lower  realms  of  life  all  action  must  be  attributed  by 
the  pleasure-pain  theory  to  present  pain.  But  the  pain 
of  hunger  seems  to  be  in  our  own  case  the  pain  of  unsat- 
isfied craving;  that  is,  the  pain  is  conditioned  by  the 
craving,  and  presupposes  it — if  there  were  no  craving, 
there  would  be  no  pain.  But  the  craving  is  essentially  a 
conation,  a  tendency  to  action,  however  vaguely  directed. 
Hunger,  then,  is  not  a  pain  which  excites  to  action ;  but  it 
is  fundamentally  a  tendency  to  action,  which,  when  it 
cannot  achieve  its  proper  end,  is  painful ;  it  is,  in  short, 
an  appetition  arising  from  a  specific  conative  disposition. 
And  it  seems  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  this  is 
true  of  the  hunger  of  animals  and  of  all  the  pains  to 
which  the  pleasure-pain  theory  finds  itself  compelled  to 
attribute  their  activities. 

The  assumption,  necessarily  made  by  the  pleasure-pain 
theory,  namely,  that  all  the  actions  of  animals  (save 
possibly  some  of  those  of  the  highest  animals)  are 
prompted  by  pain,  is,  then,  unsatisfactory,  and  seems  to 
invert  the  true  relation  of  feeling  to  conation.  That 
human  desires  and  actions  are  not  exclusively  or  in  any 
large  measure  due  to  present  pain  is  obvious ;  the 
pleasure-pain  theory,  therefore,  attributes  them  in  the 
main  to  the  pleasure  which  accompanies  the  thought  of 
the  desired  end  or  goal.  The  necessity  of  assuming  that 
the  actions  of  animals  and  those  of  men  are  predomin- 
antly prompted  by  the   opposite  principles    (pain  and 


Zye  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

pleasure  respectively)  should  give  pause  to  the  pleasure- 
pain  theory.  But,  if  we  waive  this  objection  and  inquire 
after  the  source  or  condition  of  the  pleasure  which  is 
supposed  to  accompany  the  thought  of  the  end  of  ac- 
tion and  to  prompt  to  action,  we  shall  find  that  here  too 
the  theory  inverts  the  true  relation  of  feeling  to  conation. 
Desire,  or  the  thought  of  the  desired  end,  is  pleasant  in 
so  far  as  an  appetite  or  conation  obtains  some  degree  of 
ideal  satisfaction  through  the  belief  in  the  possibility  of 
presently  achieving  the  act,  or  in  so  far  as  the  activities 
prompted  by  the  desire  successfully  achieve  the  steps 
which  are  the  means  to  the  end.  Thus  hunger,  even 
acute  hunger,  is  pleasant  if  we  know  that  the  bell  will 
presently  summon  us  to  a  well-spread  table,  or  if  we  are 
in  the  act  of  obtaining  the  food  we  desire ;  yet,  if  the 
hungry  man  knows  that  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  ob- 
tain food,  if,  for  example,  he  is  a  castaway  in  an  empty 
boat,  the  thought  of  food  is  a  torment  to  him,  though  he 
cannot  cease  to  desire  it,  or  prevent  himself  from 
dwelling  upon  the  thought  of  it. 

Both  the  pleasure  and  the  pain  of  hunger  seem,  then, 
to  be  conditioned  by  the  craving,  the  conative  tendency, 
the  specifically  directed  impulse  or  appetition.  And  this 
seems  to  be  true  not  only  of  the  desire  for  food,  but 
of  many  other  desires.  When,  for  example,  we  desire 
the  applause  of  our  fellows,  when  we  are  consumed  with 
what  is  called  disinterested  curiosity,  when  we  desire  to 
avenge  ourselves  or  vent  our  wrath  on  one  who  has  in- 
sulted us,  when  we  desire  to  relieve  distress,  when  we 
are  impelled  by  sexual  desire ;  in  all  these  cases  the  state 
of  desiring  is  painful  in  so  far  as  efforts  are  unavailing 
or  attainment  appears  impossible,  and  pleasurable  in  so 
far  as  we  are  able  to  anticipate  success  or  take  effective 
steps  towards  the  desired  end.     And  in  each  case  the 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  377 

strength  of  desire,  of  the  conative  tendency,  seems  to  be 
quite,  or  almost  quite,  independent  of  the  quality  and  of 
the  intensity  of  its  hedonic  tone ;  while  on  the  other  hand 
the  hedonic  tone  seems  to  be  manifestly  conditioned  by 
the  conative  tendency,  its  quality  by  the  success  or  failure 
of  the  striving,  its  intensity  by  the  strength  of  the  ten- 
dency. When,  then,  the  pleasure-pain  theorist  tells  us 
that  feeling  determines  conation,  we  must  ask  what  de- 
termines the  feeling;  and,  if  he  replies  that  cognition  of 
some  object  is  the  immediate  condition  of  feeling,  we 
point  to  these  numerous  instances  in  which  the  feeling- 
tone  of  the  thought  of  the  object  varies  from  pleasure  to 
pain,  its  quality  and  strength  being  obviously  determined, 
not  directly  by  cognition,  but  by  the  conation  it  evokes. 

But  if,  for  the  purpose  of  the  argument,  we  accept  the 
thesis  that  the  pleasure  of  the  idea  of  the  end,  the 
pleasure  that  we  experience  in  contemplating  the  end 
of  action,  is  the  spur  that  prompts  and  sustains  action, 
and  inquire  why  is  the  thought  of  the  desired  end  pleas- 
ant, we  find  that  two  different  answers  are  returned. 
Some  of  the  pleasure-pain  theorists  tell  us  that  the 
thought  of  the  desired  end  or  of  the  achievement  of  the 
end  is  pleasant  because  this  end  is  in  congruity  with  our 
nature.^  Now  this  can  only  mean  that  the  end  of  ac- 
tion which  on  being  contemplated  appears  pleasant  is  one 
to  which  we  naturally  tend,  that  is,  is  one  towards  which 
we  feel  impelled  in  virtue  of  a  conative  disposition  di- 
rected to  such  an  end.  To  give  this  answer  is  then  im- 
plicitly to  give  up  the  pleasure-pain  theory  and  to  admit 
the  truth  of  the  view  maintained  in  these  pages. 

The  other  answer  to  this  question  as  to  the  source  or 
ground  of  the  pleasure  we  feel  in  contemplating  the  end 
of  action,  is  to  assert  that  all  feelings  are  primarily  the 

^  E.g.,  Prof.  Muirhead,  op.  cit. 


378  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

pleasures  and  pains  of  sense,  that  certain  sensations  are 
intrinsically  pleasant  and  others  intrinsically  unpleasant, 
and  that  all  other  pleasures  and  pains  are  derived  from 
these  by  association.  According  to  this  doctrine,  which 
has  been  most  fully  elaborated  by  G.  H.  Schneider,^  the 
sight  of  food  is  pleasant,  because  the  pleasure  of  its  taste 
has  become  associated  with  the  visual  impression  accord- 
ing to  the  principle  of  contiguity ;  and  the  pleasure  thus 
associated  with  the  visual  perception  or  representation 
of  food  is  the  condition  of  the  desire  for  food,  and 
prompts  and  sustains  our  efforts  to  obtain  it.  This  an- 
swer may  seem  plausible  when  applied  to  explain  de- 
sires whose  satisfaction  normally  involves  sense-pleas- 
ures ;  though  even  in  their  case  it  is  open  to  several  very 
serious  objections.  First,  the  notion  of  the  association 
of  pleasure  with  ideas  of  objects  according  to  the  princi- 
ple of  contiguity  is  of  very  questionable  validity.  Sec- 
ondly, the  fact  that  the  feeling-tone  of  desire  for  an  ob- 
ject may  vary,  as  we  have  seen,  from  the  extreme  of  pain 
to  the  extreme  of  pleasure  is  irreconcilable  with  this 
view;  for  it  shows  that  there  is  no  fixed  association  of 
pleasure  with  the  idea  of  the  desired  object,  but  that 
the  feeling-tone  of  the  thought  of  the  object  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  way  we  think  about  it,  being  pleasant  when 
we  think  of  it  as  attainable,  unpleasant  when  we  think 
of  it  as  unattainable.  Further,  this  answer  has  no  plausi- 
bility when  applied  to  the  many  desires  the  satisfaction  of 
which  involves  no  sense-pleasure,  such  as  the  desires  for 
applause,  for  revenge,  for  knowledge. 

And  we  may  attack  the  doctrine  at  the  root  by  ques- 
tioning its  fundamental  assumption,  namely,  that  certain 
sensations  are  intrinsically  pleasurable  and  others  in- 
trinsically painful.    This  assumption  seems  most  plausi- 

'"Der  Menschliche  Wille,"  Berlin,  1882. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  379 

ble  in  the  case  of  what  are  called  physical  pains,  but 
even  in  this  connexion  its  validity  may  be  seriously  ques- 
tioned. It  may  be  maintained  that  what  we  call  a  pain- 
ful sensation  is  essentially  a  sense-impression  which 
evokes  aversion,  a  conative  tendency  to  escape  or  with- 
draw from  the  situation,  a  tendency  which  usually  mani- 
fests itself  clearly  enough,  as  when  the  hand  is  snatched 
away  from  a  hot  surface  or  a  pricking  point ;  and  that 
painful  feeling  only  arises  in  so  far  as  this  conation  fails 
to  attain  its  end.  It  seems  to  be  just  for  this  reason  that 
such  sensations  as  toothache  and  other  strong  sensations 
from  inflamed  organs  are  so  intensely  painful.  The  vari- 
ous organs  are  endowed  with  their  capacities  for  evoking 
these  strong  sensations,  in  order  that  they  may  be  with- 
drawn from  the  influence  of  the  excessive  stimuli — the 
sensitivity  of  the  teeth,  for  example,  serves  primarily  to 
prevent  our  biting  strongly  on  hard  substances  on  which 
they  might  be  broken.  But  when,  as  in  toothache,  ten- 
dencies which  such  strong  sense-impressions  excite  fail  to 
terminate  the  impression,  and  w^e  vainly  throw  ourselves 
about,  rock  to  and  fro,  or  writhe  in  a  thousand  ways,  the 
situation  is  intensely  painful.  Our  power  of  volun- 
tarily supporting  sense-impressions  that  normally  are 
painful  points  in  the  same  direction.  When  for  any 
reason  we  voluntarily  submit  to  strong  sense-impressions 
(as  when  we  have  a  tooth  filled  by  the  dentist,  making  up 
our  minds  to  submit  to  the  necessary  pain),  we  suppress 
by  a  strong  effort  of  will  partially  or  wholly  the  tendency 
to  escape  the  strong  sense-impression ;  and,  in  so  far  as 
we  are  successful  in  this,  it  loses  its  painful  character. 
In  this  way  also,  I  think,  we  must  understand  such  ex- 
treme examples  of  fortitude  as  the  calm  behaviour  of  the 
Indian  brave  or  the  Christian  martyr  under  torture;  the 
training  and  beliefs  of  such  persons  render  them  ca- 


38o  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

pable  of  voluntarily  submitting  to  the  torture  and  of  sup- 
pressing by  strong  volition  the  tendency  to  struggle  to 
escape  evoked  by  the  strong  sense-impressions ;  and,  in 
so  far  as  they  succeed  in  this,  the  experience  ceases  to  be 
painful — the  stake  and  the  rack  are  robbed  of  their  ter- 
rors. For  the  same  reason  hunger,  voluntarily  submitted 
to  (as  when  we  fast  for  the  sake  of  our  health)  is  but  a 
matter  of  small  discomfort,  though  we  are  told  that  it 
is  very  painful  when  suffered  involuntarily. 

It  may  be  maintained  with  equal  plausibility  that  the 
pleasures  of  sense  also  are  conditioned  by  conation.  If 
we  consider  the  case  of  the  pleasures  of  the  palate,  we 
see  that  the  pleasant  tastes  are  those  which  stimulate  us 
to  maintain  the  processes  of  mastication  and  deglutition. 
According  to  the  pleasure-pain  theory,  these  activities 
are  induced  and  maintained  by  the  pleasure  which  the 
taste  excites.  But  how  can  this  view  be  maintained  in 
face  of  the  fact  that  the  same  taste  qualities  cease  to  be 
pleasing  so  soon  as  they  cease  to  evoke  these  activities? 
Thus,  one  who  likes  sweet  things  finds  the  taste  of  sugar 
pleasant  so  long  as  it  subserves  its  normal  function  of 
exciting  the  processes  of  ingestion;  but  as  soon  as  re- 
pletion ensues,  the  tendency  to  mastication  and  degluti- 
tion can  no  longer  be  excited  by  the  sweet  taste  (for  this 
requires  the  co-operation  of  certain  visceral  conditions 
which  are  abolished  by  repletion),  and  the  mastication 
of  the  sugar  then  ceases  to  be  pleasant,  and  may  even 
become  decidedly  unpleasant,  if  for  any  reason  we  persist 
in  it. 

It  appears,  then,  that  even  in  thgse  instances  most 
favourable  to  the  pleasure-pain  theory,  the  facts  are  dif- 
ficult to  reconcile  with  it,  and  are  more  consistently  in 
harmony  with  the  opposite  view,  namely,  that  pleasure 
and  pain  are  always  conditioned  by  the  success  and  fail- 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  381 

ure  of  conation,  respectively.  And  the  superiority  of  the 
latter  view  vi^ill  be  established  if  we  can  point  to  in- 
stances in  which  activity  is  unmistakably  independent  of 
pleasure  and  pain ;  for  by  such  instances,  the  pleasure- 
pain  theorist  would  be  compelled  to  admit  that  his  theory 
of  action  holds  good  of  some  activities  only,  and  that 
others  require  a  different  theory  for  their  explanation, 
namely,  the  theory  which  makes  feeling  dependent  on 
conation  and  which  seems  quite  adequate  to  the  explana- 
tion of  the  types  of  activity  most  favourable  to  the 
pleasure-pain  theory.  Such  instances  we  may  find  at  the 
two  extremes  of  human  behaviour;  namely,  in  the  ac- 
tions implying  the  highest  moral  effort  and  in  merely 
habitual  actions.  Whether  or  no  we  accept  as  true  the 
story  of  the  voluntary  return  of  Regulus  to  captivity  and 
death,  we  all  recognize  that  it  represents  a  possible  type 
of  conduct.  Now  while  psychological  hedonism  has  to 
explain  such  conduct  by  supposing  that  Regulus  was 
more  averse  to  the  pains  of  remorse  than  to  those  of 
bodily  torture  and  death,  the  pleasure-pain  theory  is 
driven  to  suppose  that  the  contemplation  of  the  heroic 
line  of  action  yielded  Regulus  a  high  degree  of  pleasure, 
and  that  this  pleasure  impelled  him  to  pursue  this  line  of 
action  even  though  he  anticipated  from  it  a  painful  death ; 
or  the  alternative  explanation  might  be  suggested,  that  he 
found  his  absence  from  Carthage  so  painful  that  he  was 
impelled  by  this  pain  to  return  thither.  Surely,  whether 
from  the  ethical  or  the  psychological  standpoint,  this 
form  of  the  hedonic  theory  when  applied  to  such  in- 
stances of  hard  choice,  appears  hardly  less  fantastic  than 
psychological  hedonism !  Surely  it  is  obvious  that  men 
do  often  carry  through  a  line  of  action  which  is  to  them 
painful  in  every  phase,  in  the  contemplation  of  it,  in  de- 
ciding upon  it,  and  in  its  execution  and  achievement! 


382  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Consider  the  more  familiar  instance  of  the  father  who 

feels  himself  impelled  to  inflict  severe  punishment  upon 
a  beloved  child,  such  as  the  withholding  from  it  the  en- 
joyment of  something  to  which  they  had  both  looked  for- 
ward, hoping  to  enjoy  it  together.  At  every  stage  the 
father  hates  the  necessity  laid  upon  him,  and  knows  that 
he  himself  is  sacrificing  a  keen  pleasure  and  undertaking 
a  painful  task.  It  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  the 
father's  conduct  is  sustained  by  the  pleasure  of  the 
thought  of  the  improved  conduct  or  character  of  his  son 
which  the  punishment  may  bring  about.  Even  if  at  times 
he  may  find  consolation  in  this  thought,  it  can  be  but 
momentarily ;  and  such  pleasure  will  be  in  the  main 
wholly  submerged  and  neutralized  by  his  sympathetic 
pain  and  by  the  violence  he  does  to  the  immediate  prompt- 
ings of  parental  love. 

Instances  of  purely  habitual  and  quasi-mechanical  ac- 
tions are  not  less  decisive.  We  sometimes  find  ourselves 
performing  some  trivial  familiar  action,  without  having 
intended  or  resolved  to  do  it,  but  merely  because  we  hap- 
pen to  be  in  a  situation  in  which  this  action  is  habitually 
performed ;  as  when  one  winds  up  one's  watch  on  chang- 
ing one's  waistcoat.  Such  "absent-minded"  actions  in- 
volve a  minimum  of  attention,  but  are  nevertheless  cona- 
tion ;  they  are  the  expressions  of  habits,  and  seem  to  be 
independent  of  pleasure  and  pain,  whether  anticipated  or 
experienced  at  the  moment.  Such  an  action  is  immedi- 
ately induced  by  the  sense-impressions  of  the  moment; 
they  bring  into  play  the  specialized  conative  disposition 
which  is  the  habit.  Such  actions,  better  perhaps  than  any 
others,  enable  us  to  understand  in  some  degree  the  way 
in  which  many  of  the  actions  of  the  animals  are  per- 
formed. 

We  may  pass  on  to  consider  other  theories  of  action ; 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  383 

and  we  may  notice  first  the  only  remaining  theory  which 
makes  any  claim  to  be  applicable  to  human  behaviour  of 
all  types  and  levels.  This  is  the  intellectualist  theory  of 
action  which  attributes  action  immediately  to  "ideas," 
ignoring  the  obvious  fact  that  the  development  and 
organization  of  character,  or  of  the  conative  side  of  the 
mind,  is  largely  distinct  from  and  independent  of  the  de- 
velopment and  organization  of  knowledge,  the  cognitive 
side  of  the  mind.  Prominent  among  older  exponents  of 
this  theory  was  Herbart,  and,  among  contemporaries. 
Professor  Bosanquet  and  (if  I  have  not  wholly  failed  to 
understand  his  writings)   Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley. 

According  to  this  theory,  the  mind  consists  of  a  more 
or* less  highly  organized  system  of  ideas;  and  every  idea 
is  both  an  intellectual  entity  and  a  tendency  to  action. 
The  type  of  all  the  higher  forms  of  action  is  the  so-called 
ideo-motor  action,  the  action  which  is  supposed  to  result 
directly  from  the  presence  in  consciousness  of  the  idea  of 
that  action.  Volition  is  merely  a  somewhat  complicated 
instance  of  such  ideo-motor  action. 

Now,  it  may  be  seriously  questioned  whether  any  ac- 
tion really  conforms  to  the  alleged  ideo-motor  type.  Ac- 
tions proceeding  from  so-called  fixed  ideas  have  usually 
been  regarded  as  examples  par  excellence  of  ideo-motor 
action.  But  the  modern  developments  of  psycho-path- 
ology are  making  it  clear  that  in  all  such  cases  the  fixed 
idea  is  fixed,  and  is  capable  of  determining  action,  just 
because  it  is  functionally  associated  with  some  strong 
conative  tendency.  But,  putting  aside  this  objection  and 
accepting  for  the  purpose  of  the  discussion  the  notion 
of  ideo-motor  action,  I  urge  that  it  would  be  manifestly 
absurd  to  say  that  action  which  is  carried  out  with  pain- 
ful effort  against  inner  and  outer  difficulties  of  all  sorts, 
is  simple  ideo-motor  action.     We  have  to  ask — What 


384.  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

gives  the  one  idea  of  action  the  power  to  prevail  over 
other  ideas  of  action  equally  vividly  conceived?  Brad- 
ley's answer  to  this  question  is  that  the  self  identifies  it- 
self with  the  end  the  idea  of  which  prevails.^  Bosanquet 
answers  that  it  is  attention  to  the  one  idea.  Both  an- 
swers are  true  if  the  "self"  and  "attention"  are  under- 
stood in  the  true  sense;  that  is,  if  the  self  is  understood 
as  the  vast  organization  of  conative  dispositions  which 
is  the  character,  and  if  attention  is  understood  as  conation 
revealing  itself  in  cognition.  But  for  Bosanquet  attention 
is  merely  apperception  in  the  Herbartian  sense,  the  fusion 
of  an  idea  with  a  mass  of  congruous  ideas ;  and  since 
conation  is  not  recognized,  the  congruity  implied  is  log- 
ical congruity.  Whatever  idea  of  action,  then,  is 
congruous  with  other  ideas  of  action  is  apperceived  or 
attended  to,  and  therefore  predominates  over  other  ideas ; 
and  this  Is  volition.  Bosanquet  adds  that  "in  cases  of  de- 
liberative action  at  a  high  level  of  consciousness,  the 
self  or  personality  participates,  i.e.,  one  of  the  ideas 
which  are  striving  for  predominance  reinforces  itself  by 
the  whole  mass  of  our  positive  personality."^  But  he 
explains  that  the  whole  self  or  personality  is  merely  a 
mass  of  ideas  with  their  accompaniments  of  feeling,  "a 
fabric  of  ideas  accompanied  with  their  afifections  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  and  having  a  tendency  to  assert  them- 
selves in  so  far  as  they  become  partly  discrepant  from 
reality."'  And  in  Bradley's  view  also  the  self  seems  to  be 
merely  a  "fabric  of  ideas."  In  this  intellectualist  theory 
of  action,  then,  conation,  or  will,  which,  as  has  been 
maintained  throughout  this  volume,  is  the  very  founda- 
tion of  all  life  and  mind,  is  simply  ignored;  and  my 

*  Series  of  papers  In  Mind.     N.S.  vols,  ix-xiii. 
■"Psychology  of  the  Moral  Self,"  p.  77. 
'Op.  cit.,  p.  91. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  385 

criticism  of  it  must  consist  in  pointing  to  all  that  has  been 
said  of  instinct,  sentiment,  and  volition  in  this  book.  Un- 
less all  this  is  the  purely  fanciful  construction  of  a. 
diseased  brain,  this  intellectualist  doctrine  is  radically 
false.  I  will  only  point  out  in  addition  that,  when  we 
turn  to  the  lower  forms  of  life,  the  impotence  of  this 
theory  is  at  once  clear ;  for,  since  at  that  level  we  cannot 
postulate  "ideas,"  all  action  has  to  be  interpreted  as  purely 
mechanical  reflex  action ;  and  we  are  then  faced  with  the 
problem  of  evolving  intellect  and  will  from  unconscious 
mechanism,  a  task  to  which,  as  is  generall)^  recognized, 
the  ingenuity  of  Herbert  Spencer  himself  proved  inad- 
equate. 

All  other  theories  of  human  conduct  may  be  classed 
together  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  they  place  moral 
conduct  in  a  separate  category,  apart  from  all  other  forms 
of  behaviour,  and  attribute  it  to  some  special  faculty  pe- 
culiar to  human  beings,  which  they  call  "conscience,"  or 
"the  moral  sense,"  or  "reason,"  or  the  "rational  will,"  or 
"the  sense  of  duty" ;  a  faculty  which  seems  to  be  con- 
ceived as  having  been  implanted  in  the  human  mind  by  a 
special  act  of  the  Creator,  rather  than  as  being  the  prod- 
uct of  the  slow  processes  of  evolution.  Most  of  those 
who  attribute  moral  conduct  to  any  such  special  faculty 
recognize  that  human  nature  comprises  also  certain  lower 
principles  of  action,  which  they  call  animal  propensities, 
instincts,  or  passions ;  and  these  are  regarded  as  regret- 
table survivals  of  our  animal  ancestry,  unworthy  of  the 
attention  of  a  moral  philosopher. 

All  these  doctrines  are  open  to  two  very  serious  ob- 
jections: (i)  that  they  are  incompatible  with  the  princi- 
ple of  the  continuity  of  evolution;  (2)  that  they  are 
forms  of  the  "faculty  doctrine"  whose  fallacies  have 
so  often  been  exposed.     But  a  few  words  must  be  said 


386  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

about  the  more  important  of  them.  When  authors  tell 
us  that  "reason"  is  the  principle  of  moral  action,  it  is 
necessary  to  point  out  that  the  function  of  reason  is 
merely  to  deduce  new  propositions  from  propositions  al- 
ready accepted.  Suppose  a  hungry  man  to  be  in  the 
presence  of  a  substance  which  he  does  not  recognize 
as  food ;  by  the  aid  of  reason  he  may  discover  that  it  is 
edible  and  nutritious,  and  he  will  then  eat  it  or  desire  to 
eat  it;  but,  if  he  is  not  hungry,  reason  will  not  create  the 
desire  or  impel  him  to  eat.  And  in  the  moral  sphere  the 
function  of  reason  is  the  same.  Reason  aids  us  in  de- 
termining what  is  good,  and  in  deducing  from  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  good  conclusions  as  to  what  actions  are  right. 
But,  unless  a  man  already  hungers  for  righteousness, 
already  desires  to  do  whatever  is  right,  to  be  whatever  is 
virtuous,  unless,  that  is,  he  possesses  the  moral  senti- 
ments and  moral  character,  reason  cannot  impel  him  to 
do  right  or  to  desire  it.  To  create  desire  is  a  task  be- 
yond its  competence ;  it  can  only  direct  pre-existing  ten- 
dencies towards  their  appropriate  objects.  It  is  there- 
fore a  grave  error  on  the  part  of  some  authors^  to  say 
that  reason  may  create  a  desire  for  a  moral  quality ;  or  to 
say  (as  Sidgu'ick  said)  that  in  rational  beings  as  such 
the  cognition  or  judgment  that  this  is  right  or  ought  to  be 
done  "gives  an  impulse  or  motive  to  action."  For  this  is 
not  true  of  rational  beings  as  such — in  Satan,  we  may 
suppose,  no  such  impulse  would  be  awakened  by  this  is- 
sue of  the  reasoning  process.  It  is  true  only  of  moral  or 
moralized  beings  as  such,  beings  who  already  desire  to  be 

^  E.g.,  Dr.  Rashdall  who  writes:  "It  is  true  that  the  action 
cannot  be  done  unless  there  is  an  impulse  to  do  what  is  right 
or  reasonable  on  our  part,  but  such  a  desire  may  be  created  by 
the  Reason  which  recognizes  the  Tightness."  ("Theory  of  Good 
and  Evil,"  vol.  i.,  p.  io6). 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  387 

virtuous  and  to  do  the  right.  It  is  only  by  arbitrarily  and 
implicitly  defining  the  ''rational  being"  as  one  who  desires 
to  do  right,  that  the  doctrine  is  made  to  seem  plausible. 
Nor  is  this  doctrine,  that  moral  conduct  proceeds  from 
the  reason,  appreciably  improved  when  "the  rational  will" 
is  put  in  the  place  of  "reason."  This  may  seem  to  avoid 
the  intellectualist  fallacy  of  assigning  intellectual  proc- 
esses as  the  springs  of  action.  But,  unless  some  further 
account  of  the  will  is  given,  this  doctrine  is  in  no  way 
superior  to  the  doctrine  of  "conscience ;"  for  the  "rational 
will"  remains  a  mere  word,  by  which  we  denote  the  fact 
that  we  do  make  deliberate  moral  choices  and  deci- 
sions, and  that  su..h  choice  is  not  merely  the  issue  of  a 
brute  conflict  of  opposed  desires. 

Though  the  intuitionist  doctrines  which  attribute  moral 
judgment,  moral  choice  and  effort,  to  a  special  faculty, 
have  been  variously  stated,  and  though  the  supposed 
faculty  has  received  a  variety  of  names,  they  are  es- 
sentially similar  and  need  not  be  separately  considered. 
We  may  consider  that  form  which  derives  from  Kant 
and  attributes  our  moral  judgments  and  conduct  to  "the 
sense  of  duty."  It  is  no  longer  seriously  contended  that 
all  the  actions  of  any  moral  being  spring  from  the  "moral 
faculty."  It  is  admitted  that  upon  most  of  the  ordinary 
occasions  of  life  our  actions  spring  from  other  principles 
or  sources.  But  it  is  maintained  that,  in  deliberation 
which  issues  in  moral  decision,  this  issue  is  determined 
by  the  co-operation  of  "the  sense  of  duty."  The  "sense 
of  duty"  is  in  fact  the  last  refuge  of  intuitionism,  of 
those  moralists  who  insist  upon  making  of  man's  moral 
nature  a  mystery,  separate  from  the  larger  mystery  of 
mind,  and  implying  laws  of  an  order  radically  different 
from  those  which  govern  behaviour  in  general.  Canon 
Rashdall  writes :  "In  claiming  for  the  idea  of  duty  not 


388  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

merely  existence  but  authority,  we  have  impHed  that  the- 
recognition  that  something  is  our  duty  supplies  us  with 
what  we  recognize  upon  reflection  as  a  sufficient  motive 
for  doing  it.  ,  .  .  The  recognition  of  the  thing  as  right  is 
capable  of  producing  an  impulse  to  the  doing  of  it."^ 
And  he  speaks  of  the  "sense  of  duty"  as  being  "the  one 
all-sufficient  motive  present  to  the  consciousness"  at 
moments  of  moral  crisis.^ 

This  doctrine,  if  true,  obviates  the  need  for  all  psycho- 
logical investigation  or  reflection  on  the  part  of  the  moral 
philosopher ;  except  in  so  far  as  he  desires  to  expose 
the  errors  of  his  predecessors,  by  showing  how  they  pro- 
ceed from  a  false  and  unnecessarily  complicated  psychol- 
ogy, such  as  that  of  Kant  or  that  of  the  founders  of  Util- 
itarianism. For  the  whole  of  the  positive  psychol- 
ogy required  by  him  is  contained  in  a  nutshelL  in  the 
sentence :  "Reason  proclaims  my  duty,  and  my  sense  of 
duty  impels  me  to  do  it."  But  some  of  the  modern  ex- 
ponents of  intuitionism,  unfortunately  for  the  consistency 
of  their  doctrine,  are  not  content  to  leave  their  "sense 
of  duty"  an  utterly  mysterious  faculty  of  which  nothing 
more  can  be  said.  Sidgwick  asserted  that  the  notion  of 
"ought"  or  duty  is  too  elementary  to  admit  of  formal 
definition ;  and  in  the  same  spirit  Dr.  Rashdall  tells  us 
that  the  idea  that  something  ought  to  be  done  "is  an  un- 
analysable idea  which  is  involved  in  all  ethical  judg- 
ments." But  he  ventures  further  and  tells  us  that  "Duty 
means  precisely  devotion  to  the  various  kinds  of  good 
in  proportion  to  their  relative  value  and  importance"  f 
and  again:  "At  bottom  the  sense  of  duty  is  the  due  ap-  , 
preciation  of  the  proportionate  objective  value  of  ends."^ 

*  "Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,"  vol.  i.,  p.  104. 

*0p.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  121.  ^Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  125. 

*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.   128. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  389 

From  this  it  appears  that,  by  the  admission  of  a  prom- 
inent exponent  of  the  intuitionist  doctrine,  "the  sense  of 
duty"  is  not  an  uhimate  element  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness, is  not  an  unanalysable  idea  and  at  the  same  time  an 
impulse  to  action ;  rather  it  appears  as  the  highly  ab- 
stract name  for  all  that  immensely  complex  part  of  the 
mental  organization  which  is  the  moral  character,  and 
which  comprises  the  system  of  the  moral  sentiments  and 
the  developed  self-regarding  sentiment.  For  it  is  the 
possession  of  developed  moral  character,  and  this  alone, 
that  enables  us  to  judge  rightly  of  the  relative  values  of 
moral  goods  and  impels  us  to  pursue  the  best ;  and,  as  I 
have  tried  to  show  in  this  book,  and  as  indeed  is  now 
generally  admitted,  this  complex  organization  which  is 
moral  character  is  only  acquired  by  any  individual  by  a 
slow  process  of  growth  continued  through  many  years 
under  the  constant  pressure  of  the  social  environment  and 
of  the  moral  tradition.  Our  "sense  of  duty"  is,  in  short, 
at  the  lower  moral  level  our  sense  of  what  is  demanded 
of  us  by  our  fellows ;  and,  at  the  higher  moral  level,  it 
is  our  sense  of  what  we  demand  of  ourselves  in  virtue  of 
the  ideal  of  character  that  we  have  formed.  How  and 
why  we  respond  to  these  demands  made  upon  us  by  our 
fellows  and  by  ourselves,  and  how  we  come  to  make  these 
demands,  I  have  tried  to  show  by  means  of  a  general 
theory  of  action,  a  theory  of  the  moral  sentiments  and  a 
theory  of  volition. 

Before  dismissing  the  theory  of  "a.  moral  faculty,"  I 
must  add  that  in  one  respect  the  intuitionist  doctrine  is 
true ;  namely,  it  is  true  that  when  we  have  acquired  moral 
sentiments  we  do  frequently  both  pass  moral  judgments 
and  make  moral  efforts  without  any  weighing  of  the  con- 
sequences of  action.  But  to  admit  or  to  establish  this  is 
neither  to  justify  the  doctrine  of  "a  moral  faculty,"  nor 


390  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

to  deny  that  our  moral  judgments  frequently  need  cor- 
rection by  reference  to  the  consequences  of  action  upon 
human  welfare,  the  only  true  and  ultimate  criterion  of 
moral  value. 

We  may  admit  also  the  possibility  that,  though  the 
moral  sentiments  are  in  the  main  built  up  anew  in  each 
individual  in  the  way  roughly  sketched  in  the  pages 
of  this  volume,  some  predisposition  to  their  formation 
may  be  inherited,  and  that,  in  so  far  as  this  is  the  case, 
the  capacity  of  moral  judgment,  which  is  rooted  in  them, 
may  be  said  to  be  innate  and,  in  that  sense,  a  priori. 

It  only  remains  to  show  that  the  theory  of  action 
here  set  forth  is  implied  in  the  doctrines  of  some  emi- 
nent philosophers  (although  it  has  not  been  explicitly 
stated  by  them),  and  most  clearly  perhaps  by  T.  H.  Green 
and  Prof.  Stout.  These  authors  recognize  the  actions  of 
animals  as  true  conations  or  expressions  of  will,  in  the 
wider  sense  of  the  word  "will."  They  recognize  that 
human  nature  is  capable  of,  or  liable  to,  similar  modes  of 
primitive  conation ;  and  that  desire  is  a  comparatively 
complex  mode  of  conation  of  which,  perhaps,  in  the 
proper  sense  men  only  are  capable.  But  they  do  not  claim 
that  volition  or  moral  conduct  is  nothing  more  than  the 
issue  of  a  conflict  of  desires.  They  rightly  tell  us  that 
these  simpler  modes  of  conation,  bHnd  impulses,  cravings, 
and  desires,  are  something  that  each  man  experiences  as, 
in  a  sense,  forces  acting  upon  him,  impelling  him  towards 
this  or  that  line  of  action ;  and  that  he  knows  that  his  true 
self  can  either  oppose  such  tendencies,  or  can  accept 
them ;  and  that  only  when  the  self  thus  intervenes  to  ac- 
cept or  resist  desire  or  impulse  do  we  perform  a  voli- 
tional act.  And  by  the  self  they  do  not  mean  an  abstract 
entity  of  which  no  account  can  be  given.    Green  tells  us 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  391 

that  by  the  true  self  he  means  the  character  of  the  man ; 
he  uses  also  the  term  "conscience"  to  convey  the  same 
notion ;  and  by  conscience  he  means  something  which  has 
a  history  in  the  life  of  the  individual,  something  that  is 
slowly  built  up  in  the  course  of  moral  training  and  under 
the  influence  of  the  social  environment ;  conscience  or 
moral  character  is,  in  short,  in  Green's  view  an  organized 
system  of  habits  of  will. 

Stout  also  tells  us  that  volition  is  distinguished  from 
mere  conflict  of  desires  by  the  decisive  intervention  of 
self-consciousness ;  and  that  this  self,  which  in  moral  con- 
flict self-consciously  throws  itself  upon  the  side  of  one 
desire  and  against  others,  is  a  unified  system  of  interests. 
Now  an  interest  is,  for  Stout,  a  conative  tendency  with 
the  accompanying  potentialities  of  feeling;  and  the  self, 
therefore,  is  a  unified  system  of  conative  tendencies. 

These  authors,  then,  have  put  forward  in  very  general 
terms  the  theory  of  action  which  I  am  defending.  They 
recognize  will  as  a  fundamental  faculty  co-ordinate  with 
cognition;  they  recognize  that  in  all  organisms  (animals 
and  men  alike),  this  faculty  of  striving  is  directed  either 
vaguely  or  with  more  or  less  of  precision  towards  cer- 
tain kinds  of  action  which  tend  to  secure  specific  ends; 
I  that  when  these  conative  tendencies  are  brought  into 
play  in  relative  isolation,  sporadic  impulse,  desire,  or  ac- 
tion is  the  result ;  and  they  recognize  that  moral  volition 
and  moral  conduct  depend  upon  the  systematic  organiza- 
tion of  such  tendencies ;  that  in  short,  moral  volition  ex- 
presses character  or  is  character  in  action.  Their  doc- 
trines, then,  imply  the  thesis  here  maintained ;  namely, 
that  in  order  to  explain  or  understand  any  action  we  have 
to  exhibit  it  as  the  expression  of  some  single  conative  dis- 
position, or  of  a  conflict  of,  or  of  some  conjunction  of, 


392  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

such  tendencies,  according  to  the  plan  of  organization  of 
the  character;  and  that,  when  we  thus  show  it  to  be  an 
instance  of  conation  or  appetition  conforming  to  the  most 
general  laws  of  appetition,  we  do  all  that  as  men  of 
science  we  can  be  called  upon  to  do. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  CHAPTER  II 

THE  DERIVED   EMOTIONS 

TN  the  first  part  of  this  book  I  distinguished  certain 
emotions  as  primary  emotions,  namely,  fear,  anger, 
tender-emotion,  disgust,  positive  self-feeHng,  negative 
self-feeUng  and  wonder.  The  peculiarity  of  these  emo- 
tions which  gives  them  their  position  of  primary  import- 
ance is,  I  maintained,  the  fact  that  each  one  is  the 
immediate  inevitable  result  and  subjective  expression  of 
the  excitement  of  an  instinct,  an  innate  disposition 
specifically  directed  to  some  particular  mode  of  action. 
It  was  not  my  in-tention  to  assert  that  no  other  than  these 
seven  emotions  belong  to  this  class.  I  recognised  the 
fact  that  the  innate  constitution  of  man  comprises  other 
instinctive  dispositions,  and  that  the  excitement  of  any 
one  of  these  is  accompanied  by  some  subjective  excite- 
ment or  feeling  which  is  of  the  same  order  as  the  primary 
emotions ;  but,  I  said,  the  qualities  of  these  states  of 
feeling  are  obscure,  are  but  little  differentiated  and 
therefore  not  easily  recognisable  introspectively. 

Beside  these  primary  emotions  I  described  a  number 
of  well-recognised  emotions  as  being  essentially  com- 
pounds or  blends  of  the  primary  emotions ;  that  is  to  say 
emotional  qualities  which  are  experienced  when  two  or 
more  of  the  great  instinctive  tendencies  are  simultan- 
eously excited.  Examples  of  this  class  are  awe,  rever- 
ence, gratitude,  admiration,  scorn,  envy.  Some  of  these 
blended  emotions,  I  said,  are  only  aroused  in  virtue  of  the 

393 


394  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

previous  acquisition  of  sentiments,  permanent  or  habitual 
emotional-conative  attitudes  towards  particular  objects 
or  classes  of  things.  As  examples  of  this  class,  reproach, 
jealousy,  vengeful  emotion,  and  shame  were  analyzed. 

I  then  discussed  joy  and  sorrow,  arguing  that  neither 
of  these  is  to  be  classed  with  the  primary  emotions ; 
because  each  of  them  is  a  state  of  feeling  or  emotion 
which  is  not  the  immediate  effect  and  expression  of  the 
excitement  of  any  one  instinct  or  disposition,  but  rather 
arises  when  any  of  the  conative  tendencies  operate  under 
certain  conditions.  They  may  therefore  be  distinguished 
as  derived  or  secondary  emotions.  Joy  and  sorrow  are 
not  the  only  emotions  of  this  class ;  there  is  a  large  num- 
ber of  emotional  states,  easily  recognised  and  commonly 
distinguished  by  well-established  names,  which  must  be 
regarded  as  belonging  to  this  class  of  derived  emotions ; 
for  they  arise  only  when  the  various  active  tendencies 
of  our  nature  operate  under  special  mental  conditions. 
They  seem  to  be  connected  with  no  special  conative  dis- 
positions ;  but  each  of  them  rises  to  color  our  whole 
consciousness  when  any  one  of  these  dispositions  operates 
under  the  appropriate  conditions. 

I  have  felt  that  not  only  are  these  emotions  of  great 
interest  and  importance  in  themselves,  but  that  a  dis- 
cussion of  them  and  of  the  conditions  under  which  they 
arise  and  of  their  relations  to  the  primary  emotions  and 
tendencies  will  make  clearer  to  the  mind  of  my  readers 
the  distinctive  position  assigned  to  the  primary  emotions 
in  the  foregoing  chapters  of  this  book.  I  therefore  add 
this  chapter,  and  I  propose  to  discuss  these  derived  emo- 
tions in  the  light  of,  and  largely  in  the  form  of  a  criticism 
of,  Mr.  Shand's  treatment  of  them  in  his  work  on  "The 
Foundations  of  Character."^  For  Mr.  Shand  has  given 
1  London,  1914. 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  395 

us  a  more  elaborate  and  careful  study  of  these  emotions 
than  any  other  that  has  been  pubUshed ;  and  the  contrast- 
ing of  my  own  view  of  them  with  his  will,  I  think,  aid  in 
bringing  clearly  to  mind  some  of  the  many  interesting 
problems  presented  by  them. 

Mr.  Shand  has  pointed  out  that  the  emotions  of  this 
class,  of  which  the  types  are  confidence,  hope,  disappoint- 
ment, anxiety,  despondency  and  despair,  always  arise  in 
the  course  of  the  operation  of  some  continued  desire, 
and  he  therefore  treats  of  them  under  the  head  of  the 
prospective  emotions  of  desire.  With  this  I  am  in  entire 
agreement,  save  that  I  would  enlarge  the  class  by  in- 
cluding in  it  the  retrospective  as  well  as  the  prospective 
emotions  of  desire;  thus  we  should  add  regret,  remorse 
and  sorrow.  Joy,  I  submit,  occupies  a  peculiar  position, 
in  that  it  belongs  to  both  groups;  there  are  retrospective 
as  well  as  prospective  joys. 

These  emotions  occur  in  all  degrees  of  intensity;  but 
we  may  with  advantage  fix  our  attention  upon  their  more 
intense  manifestations,  to  the  neglect  of  their  fainter 
forms  in  which  one  or  other  of  them  is  present  to 
consciousness  at  almost  all  moments  of  our  waking  life, 
faithfully  attending  every  movement  of  our  conative 
tendencies. 

The  operation  of  some  strong  continued  desire  is,  then, 
the  essential  condition  of  the  rise  to  consciousness  of  the 
emotions  of  this  class;  and,  since  such  desire  commonly 
arises  from  some  strongly  organised  sentiment,  these 
emotions  arise  most  frequently  in  connection  with  the 
operation  of  such  sentiments ;  but  this  is  not  necessarily 
or  always  the  case.  For  exam.ple,  a  desire  for  food  may 
spring  from  the  simple  primary  hunger  tendency ;  and,  if 
such  a  simple  primary  instinctive  desire  or  appetite  is 
sufficiently  strong,  it  may  generate  most,  though  perhaps 


396  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

not  all,  of  these  prospective  and  retrospective  emotions 
of  desire. 

Shand  regards  desire  itself  as  an  emotional  system,  and 
these  emotions  of  desire  as  comparable  with  those  I  have 
distinguished  as  the  primary  emotions;  that  is  to  say  he 
regards  each  of  these  qualities  of  emotion  as  being  rooted 
in  or  dependent  upon  the  activity  of  a  specific  disposition, 
one  which  has  its  own  conative  tendency  and  proper  end ; 
and  the  system  of  desire  is  for  him  a  complex  disposition 
given  in  the  innate  constitution  and  composed  of  the 
postulated  dispositions  of  all  these  emotions  of  desire.^ 
He  is  committed  to  this  treatment  of  these  emotions  by 
his  view  that  each  emotion  is  not,  as  is  my  view,  merely 
a  specific  affective  tone  or  coloring  of  consciouness  quali- 
fying our  mental  activities,  but  is  essentially  a  disposition 
having  its  own  specific  conative  tendency;  the  instincts 
being   merely    dispositions    to   special    modes    of   bodily 

1  He  writes:  "Desire  is  then  a  very  complex  emotional 
system,  which  includes  actually  or  potentially  the  six  pros- 
pective emotions  of  hope,  anxiety,  disappointment,  despon- 
dency, confidence,  and  despair"  (p.  463).  And  he  tells  us  that 
"desire  ...  is  essentially  an  organisation  of  those  emotional 
dispositions  which  are  characteristic  of  its  process."  Shand 
thus  describes  "desire"  as  a  complex  disposition  similar  in 
nature  to  the  complex  sentiments  of  love  or  hate.  Yet  he 
is  clearly  aware  that  desire  is  not  in  the  least  comparable 
to  either  a  sentiment  or  one  of  the  primary  emotions.  For  in 
another  place  (p.  519)  he  writes  that  desire  is  an  abstraction, 
and  that  "it  is  a  complete  mistake  to  represent  desire  as  an 
independent  force,  and  to  suppose  that  it  can  be  co-ordinated 
either  with  the  emotions  or  with  the  sentiments."  This  re- 
veals very  clearly  the  confusion  into  which  he  has  fallen, 
a  confusion  which  runs  throughout  the  whole  of  his  book, 
and  which  is  largely  due  to  his  failure  to  hold  fast  to  the  very 
important  distinction  between  facts  of  mental  function  and 
facts  of  mental  structure.  Desire,  like  the  emotions,  is  a 
fact  of  mental  function,  a  mode  or  aspect  of  mental  activity, 
and  may  and  does  arise  whenever  any  strong  impulse  or 
conative  tendency  cannot  find  immediate  satisfaction.  Dispo- 
sitions within  which,  or  from  which,  emotions  and  desires 
arise  are  facts  of  mental  structure. 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  397 

movement,  subordinated  to  and  more  or  less  organised 
within  the  emotional  dispositions. 

In  opposition  to  this,  I  submit,  that,  while  the  primary- 
emotions  may  loosely  be  said  to  have  the  specific  ten- 
dencies of  the  instinctive  dispositions  in  which  they  are 
rooted,  these  derived  emotions  have  no  such  specific  ten- 
dencies, for  they  are  not  attached  to  or  rooted  in  any 
special  dispositions;  they  are,  therefore,  not  forces  of 
character,  and  cannot  be  said  in  any  true  and  significant 
meaning  of  the  words  to  be  organised  within  the  senti- 
ments or  in  the  great  hierarchy  of  sentiments  which  is 
the  character  of  the  individual. 

Desire  is  the  general  name  for  that  peculiar  experience 
which  arises  in  every  mind  (sufficiently  developed  intel- 
lectually to  hold  before  itself  the  idea  of  an  end)  when- 
ever any  strong  impulse  or  conative  tendency  cannot 
immediately  attain  or  actively  progress  towards  its 
natural  end.  If  this  be  true,  and  I  believe  that  some  such 
statement  of  the  nature  of  desire  is  generally  acceptable 
to  almost  all  psychologists,  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to 
postulate  some  special  disposition  as  the  root  of  desire. 
If,  following  Shand,  we  did  so,  we  should  find  ourselves 
involved  in  insoluable  difficulties,  when  we  attempted  to 
conceive  the  relation  of  this  special  disposition  to  the 
other  conative  dispositions,  whether  the  primary  instincts 
or  the  sentiments ;  and  if,  like  Shand,  we  further  assumed 
that  it  is  a  highly  complex  disposition,  comprising  the 
special  dispositions  of  all  the  emotions  of  desire,  our 
difficulties  would  be  very  greatly  and  gratuitously  in- 
creased. Shand  seems  to  have  reached  this  view  through 
allowing  himself  to  be  unduly  influenced  by  the  literary 
tradition,  to  which  he  attaches  great  importance;  for  in 
poetry  and  the  "belles-lettres"  these  emotions  are  com- 


398  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

monly  spoken  of  as  forces  or  agents,  and  are  frequently 
personified. 

This  influence  may  be  illustrated  by  citing  Shand's 
treatment  of  hope.  He  regards  hope  as  one  of  the 
greatest  forces  that  operate  in  the  mind,  as  something 
that  enters  into  the  structure  of  character;  and  he  attri- 
butes to  it  a  variety  of  effects  upon  conduct.  He  points 
out  that  the  poets  have  generally  attributed  to  it  "a.  ten- 
dency of  supreme  importance  to  desire  and  love."  Thus 
Shelley  v^^rote:  "Hope  still  creates  from  its  own  wreck 
the  thing  it  contemplates."  Milton  exclaimed:  "What 
reinforcement  we  may  gain  from  hope !"  and  Tennyson 
wrote  of  "the  mighty  hope  that  makes  us  men." 
Campbell,  addressing  "Hope,"  said: 

"Thine  is  the  charm  of  life's  bewildered  way, 
That  calls  each  slumbering  passion  into  play;" 

and  Amiel  wrote :  "At  bottom  everything  depends  on  the 
presence  or  absence  of  one  single  element  in  the  soul — 
hope.  All  the  activities  of  man  .  .  .  presuppose  a  hope 
in  him  of  attaining  an  end.  Once  kill  this  hope,  and  his 
movements  become  senseless,  spasmodic  and  convulsive." 
Shand,  who  cites  these  and  other  similar  remarks  of  the 
poets  upon  hope,  adds :  "No  other  emotion  has  had  such 
general  tribute  paid  to  it;"  and  he  regards  these  poetic 
sayings  as  strong  evidence  of  the  truth  of  his  view  of  this 
emotion.  He  proceeds  to  translate  these  poetic  expres- 
sions into  sober  scientific  language,  defining  the  tenden- 
cies of  hope  as  follows:  "Hope  increases  the  activity  of 
desire,  aids  it  in  resisting  misfortune  and  the  influence 
of  depressing  emotions,  and  in  both  ways  furthers  the 
attainment  of  its  end ;"  and  "hope  tends  always  to  make 
the  future  appear  better  than  the  present,"  and  thus  also 
strengthens  desire.  We  are  told  also  that  hope  tends  to 
give  us  courage,  that  it  tends  to  conserve  the  direction  of 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  399 

thought  and  effort,  and  that  hope  has  this  indespensable 
use  and  function  for  desire.  He  treats  of  the  other 
emotions  of  this  group  in  similar  fashion,  adducing  the 
sayings  of  the  poets  in  support  of  his  view  that  they  all 
are  actual  mental  forces  having  their  distinctive  tenden- 
cies towards  specific  ends.  Now  we  cannot  put  aside 
this  literary  evidence  as  of  no  account;  but  Shand,  I 
venture  to  think,  attaches  too  much  importance  to  it. 
The  poets  speak  with  poetic  licence  and  in  metaphorical 
language,  they  are  not  concerned  with  scientific  analysis, 
and  do  not  attempt  to  use  a  scientific  terminology;  and, 
when  they  speak  of  hope  or  despondency  or  despair  as 
forces  which  impel  to  this  or  that  form  of  behaviour, 
we  do  them  no  wrong  and  make  no  reflection  upon  their 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  if  we  abstain  from  taking 
their  words  in  the  most  literal  sense. 

The  principal  objection  to  accepting  these  emotions  as 
forces  comparable  to  the  great  primary  emotional  con- 
ative  tendencies,  such  as  anger  and  fear,  is  that  they 
always  arise  as  incidents  or  phases  of  feeling  in  the 
course  of  the  operation  of  some  activity  prompted  by 
some  other  motive.  Thus,  hope  is  never  an  independent 
motive;  we  hope  always  for  the  attainment  of  some  end 
which  we  desire  or  aim  at  from  some  other  motive  than 
hope;  and  the  driving  power  which  Shand  attributes  to 
hope  itself  may,  without  improbability  or  any  distortion 
of  the  facts,  be  attributed  to  this  primary  motive  or  desire. 
Secondly,  the  ends  assigned  to  these  emotions  are  highly 
general  and  abstract ;  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  any 
innate  disposition  can  be  directed  to  any  specific  end  so 
highly  abstract  as  "making  the  future  appear  better  than 
the  present."  Thirdly,  as  we  have  already  seen,  desire 
itself  is,  by  Shand's  own  admission,  an  abstraction ;  and 
these  emotions  of  desire  are  equally  abstractions ;  they 


400  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

are  so  many  distinguishable  ways  in  which  the  desire  and 
emotion  springing  from  any  primary  conative  disposition, 
or  from  any  sentiment,  are  modified  by  our  intellectual 
apprehension  of  the  degree  of  success  or  failure  attending 
our  efforts  towards  the  end  of  our  desire.  Fourthly, 
though  these  emotional  states  are  sufficiently  distinct  to 
be  generally  and  intelligibly  denoted  by  distinct  names, 
they  do  not  differ  one  from  another  in  the  fundamental 
way  in  which  anger  differs  from  fear  or  disgust  or  tender 
emotion;  rather  they  pass  into  one  another  by  insensible 
gradations,  and  the  names  we  give  them  mark  merely 
points  or  regions  in  a  continuous  scale  of  feeling.  If, 
then,  we  can  account  for  them  by  a  simpler  hypothesis 
than  Shand's,  and  in  so  doing  avoid  the  very  great  diffi- 
culties that  arise  on  the  acceptance  of  his  view  of  them, 
we  are  compelled  by  the  principles  of  scientific  method 
to  adopt  the  simpler  hypothesis. 

Let  us  see  how  the  simpler  view  works  when  applied 
to  some  one  strong  desire ;  and,  for  simplicity's  sake,  let 
us  take  a  desire  rooted  in  a  strong  and  primitive  tendency, 
the  tendency  to  seek  food  when  hungry.  Let  us  imagine 
ourselves  to  be  a  party  of  polar  explorers  returning  from 
a  dash  for  the  Pole  and  making  for  a  deposit  of  food  a 
few  days'  march  away.  We  have  exhausted  the  supplies 
which  we  carried  with  us ;  but  the  conditions  of  travelling 
are  good,  we  are  all  in  vigorous  health,  and  we  know 
exactly  where  to  find  the  hidden  store  of  food.  Then, 
.  though  we  all  desire  strongly  to  find  this  food,  and  though 
our  minds  may  be  much  occupied  by  the  thought  of  it, 
even  tormented  by  ideas  of  succulent  beefsteaks,  we  go 
forward  in  confidence.  We  do  not  hope  for  the  food; 
we  confidently  look  forward  to  reaching  it;  our  line  of 
action  lies  clear  before  us ;  nothing  raises  a  doubt  of  our 
success;  we  are  simply  impelled  to  vigorous  sustained 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  401 

effort  by  our  strong  desire.  Confidence  has  thus  a  neg- 
ative condition;  it  is  simply  desire  working  towards  its 
end  unobstructedly.  Shand  tells  us  that  "confidence 
tends  to  relax  the  higher  intellectual  and  voluntary 
processes  and  to  leave  the  accomplishment  of  desire  to 
external  events  or  to  processes  that  are  automatic."  It 
is  easy  to  see  in  the  light  of  our  illustration  how  he  arrives 
at  this  view.  Our  party  of  polar  explorers  needs  to 
form  no  further  plans ;  it  has  only  to  persist  in  the  one 
line  of  vigorous  activity,  and  its  end  will  be  reached. 
But,  though  it  needs  no  further  deliberation,  its  efforts 
will  hardly  be  relaxed  by  confidence.  The  true  statement 
seems  to  be  that,  when  our  purpose  and  plan  of  action 
are  in  no  way  obstructed  by  any  imagined  possibility  of 
failure,  we  work  on  simply  without  further  planning 
along  the  line  of  action  that  lies  plain  before  us ;  our 
impulse  or  desire  carries  us  on  with  full  force  and  con- 
centration of  energy,  because  it  is  untroubled  and  unob- 
structed^. 

1  It  is  perhaps  worth  while  to  point  out  that  this  view  of 
the  nature  and  condition  of  "confidence"  points  the  way  to  a 
more  satisfactory  account  of  "belief"  than  any  that  we  as 
yet  have.  It  has  been  generally  recognized  that  action,  or 
readiness  to  act,  upon  belief  is  the  best,  if  not  the  sole  objec- 
tive evidence  of  its  reality.  It  is  perhaps  less  generally 
recognised  that  belief  is  always  determined  by  conation,  that 
there  is  no  belief  without  desire;  yet  such  seem  to  be  the 
fact.  Propositions  about  things  that  awake  in  us  no  desire, 
no  conation,  are  neither  believed,  nor  disbelieved,  nor 
doubted;  in  face  of  them  we  remain  merely  neutral.  It  has 
also  been  v/idely  recognized  that  belief  is  a  state  of  an 
emotional  nature,  or  at  least  allied  to  the  emotions.  I  suggest 
that  "belief"  is  essentially  the  same  emotional  state  as 
"confidence",  and  is  accordingly  a  member  of  the  continuous 
series  of  derived  emotions  of  desire.  The  only  essential 
difference  between  "confidence"  and  "belief"  is  that  the 
former  feeling  qualifies  our  active  striving  toward  a  desired 
end,  while  "belief"  is  the  feeling  which  qualifies  processes 
on  the  plane  of  intellectual  activity  which  cannot  issue  forth- 
with in  action.  If  I  have  good  evidence  that  a  desired  object 
is  at  a  certain  place,  I  go  with  confidence  to  find  it;  but  if 


402  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

But  suppose  that  the  sky  becomes  overcast,  threatening 
a  blizzard;  or  that  the  snow  underfoot  becomes  so  soft 
as  greatly  to  impede  our  progress ;  or  let  any  other 
difficulty  arise  that  renders  us  a  little  doubtful  of  at- 
taining our  end.  At  once  we  begin  to  hope:  we  hope 
the  weather  will  hold  good;  we  hope  the  snow  will 
harden;  we  trudge  on,  no  longer  confident,  but  full  of 
hope,  contemplating  the  desired  end,  enjoying  in  antici- 
pation the  food  we  desire  and  seek.  But  the  threat, 
however  faint,  of  some  cause  of  failure  leads  us  to 
concentrate  our  efforts  a  little  more,  keeps  our  minds 
more  constantly  occupied  with  the  one  all-important  end, 
restrains  us  from  all  unnecessary  dispersion  of  our  ener- 
gies. That  is  a  fundamental  law  of  all  impulse,  all  con- 
ation ;  obstruction  leads  to  more  explicit  definition  of  the 
end  and  of  the  means  to  it,  brings  the  conative  process 
more  vividly  into  consciousness.  Hope,  then,  is  not  a 
new  force  added  to  our  desire ;  it  is  merely  a  new  way  in 
which  the  desire  operates  when  confidence  is  no  longer 
complete.  So  long  as  the  threat  is  slight  or  distant,  our 
desire  continues  to  carry  with  it  a  pleasurable  anticipation 
of  attainment ;  that  is  characteristic  of  the  state  of  hope. 

But  let  the  difficulties  loom  larger;  the  snow  begins  to 
fall  and  the  wind  rises  against  us.  Then  hope  gives  place 
to  anxiety,  or  alternates  with  it;  and  there  is  no  sharp 
line  of  transition  between  the  two  states.  In  anxiety 
our  attention  becomes  still  further  concentrated  upon  the 
task  in  hand,  but  especially  upon  the  means,  rather  than 
upon  the  end.  We  think  of  every  possibility;  we  try  to 
think  out  new  means  to  meet  the  hitherto  unforeseen 

I  also  know  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  access  to  that  place, 
I  merely  believe  that  the  desired  object  is  there.  Doubt  bears 
the  same  relation  to  belief  that  anxiety  bears  to  confidence; 
it  is  anxiety  on  the  plane  of  intellectual  activity  when  action 
is  necessarily  postponed  or  suspended. 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  403 

difficulty.  We  consider  whether  it  might  not  be  wiser 
to  leave  the  less  vigorous  members  of  the  party  in  some 
sheltered  spot,  while  the  stronger  push  on  with  all  possible 
speed  to  find  the  much  desired  store  of  food.  The 
pleasurable  anticipation  of  success,  which  colored  our 
state  of  hope,  gives  place  to  the  painful  thought  of  failure 
and  its  consequences ;  we  begin  to  think,  not  so  much 
of  the  meal  we  shall  enjoy,  but  rather  of  our  state  if  we 
should  fail  to  attain  the  end  of  our  desire;  we  picture 
ourselves  camping  once  more  without  food ;  we  think  of 
the  night  of  troubled  dreams  and  continued  anxiety  and 
of  ourselves  setting  out  once  more  in  a  weakened  condi- 
tion. This  is  not  the  effect  of  a  new  force;  it  is  the 
same  force,  the  desire  for  food,  working  under  changed 
intellectual  conditions.  Shand  says :  "Anxiety  is  a  con- 
stant stimulus,  sustaining  attention  and  thought  and  the 
bodily  processes  subservient  to  desire  .  .  .  Anxiety 
counteracts  the  extravagant  anticipations  of  hope — it 
counteracts  by  watchfulness  and  forethought  the  careless 
attitude  into  which  we  are  apt  to  fall  through  the  influence 
of  hope."^  I  submit  that  anxiety  is  the  name  by  which 
we  denote  our  state  when  the  means  we  are  taking 
towards  the  desired  end  begin  to  seem  inadequate,  when 
we  cast  about  for  possible  alternatives  and  begin  to 
anticipate  the  pains  of  failure.  I  suggest  that,  if  in  such 
case  any  new  conative  force  enters  into  the  process,  it  is 
the  impulse  of  fear  awakened  by  the  thought  of  the  con- 
sequences of  failure,  or  that  of  anger  roused,  according 
to  the  general  law  of  anger,^  by  obstruction  to  the  course 
of  conation.  I  maintain  that  anxiety  in  itself  is  not  a 
conative  force  distinct  from,  and  capable  of  being  added 
to,  the  original  desire. 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  482. 

2  See  p.  59. 


404  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

As  confidence  passes  into  hope,  when  difficulties  arise ; 
and  as  hope  passes  into  anxiety,  when  the  difficuhies  grow 
more  serious  and  threatening;  so  anxiety  passes  into 
despondency,  as  we  begin  to  feel  that  our  difficulties  are 
too  great  to  be  overcome  by  any  effort.  When  hope 
fades  away  and  becomes  faint,  we  begin  to  despond ; 
or  in  poetical  language  we  might  say  that  despondency 
drives  out  hope;  and  in  similar  language  we  might 
describe  anxiety  as  a  conflict  between  hope  and  despon- 
dency, each  of  the  antagonists  gaining  in  turn  the  upper 
hand.  But  this  would  be  metaphorical  language.  When 
in  an  earlier  chapter  I  wrote  of  conflict  between  the 
impulses  of  fear  and  curiosity,  or  of  fear  and  anger,  or 
of  positive  and  negative  self-feeling,  that  was  not  the 
language  of  metaphor.  For  in  each  of  those  cases  there 
are  at  work  two  impulses  of  opposed  tendency  which 
really  conflict;  as  we  see  in  the  hesitating  alternating 
behaviour  of  the  animal  or  the  child  that  is  at  once 
fearful  and  curious,  or  angry  and  yet  afraid — "Willing 
to  wound,  and  yet  afraid  to  strike."  But  in  hope  and 
despondency,  and  when  they  alternate  in  anxiety,  the 
motive  or  conative  tendency  and  the  end  are  the  same 
throughout.  The  states  differ  only  in  that  in  hope  the 
desire  of  the  end  is  qualified  and  supported  by  pleasant 
anticipation  of  attainment;  while  in  despondency  our 
desire  is  colored  and  checked  by  the  painful  anticipation 
of  failure.  In  despondency  we  trudge  on,  but  with 
lowered  heads  and  drooping  shoulders;  we  have  to  re- 
enforce  our  desire  by  volition,  by  calling  up  all  our  reso- 
lution; that  is  to  say,  by  holding  up  our  ideal  of  self, 
evoking  our  self-assertive  tendency.  We  say:  "No 
matter  how  hopeless  our  effort,  we  will  not  give  in;  if 
we  must  die,  we  will  die  gamely,  struggling  to  the  end 
as  Englishmen  should."    In  so  far  as  in  despondency 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  405 

our  efforts  are  less  vigorous  than  in  hope,  the  difference 
is  sufficiently  accounted  for  by  the  most  general  law  of 
feeling,  namely,  that  pleasure  re-enforces  and  sustains 
the  activities  it  qualifies,  while  pain  tends  to  weaken  and 
suppress  them.  And  in  anxiety  we  have  no  true  conflict 
of  opposed  impulses  of  hope  and  despondency;  we  have 
merely  the  one  desire  or  conative  tendency,  working 
under  such  conditions  that  pleasurable  anticipation  of 
success  and  painful  anticipation  of  failure  are  about 
equally  balanced ;  the  probabilities  seem  to  be  about  equal, 
and  we  alternate  between  the  two  states.  Shand, 
attempting  to  define  the  tendency  of  despondency  and  its 
biological  function,  says:  "Despondency  weakens  desire, 
just  as  hope  strengthens  it;"  and  then  he  is  hard  put  to 
it  to  find  a  use,  a  biological  justification  and  raison  d'etre, 
for  such  an  impulse.  It  serves,  he  suggests,  to  turn  us 
from  the  particular  line  ^of  action  we  are  pursuing  as 
means  to  the  desired  end,  and  to  make  us  look  about  for 
other  means.  But  this  is  just  the  function  of  pain  as  we 
see  it  at  work  all  down  the  scale  of  life  from  the  proto- 
zoon  to  man. 

Now  imagine  our  polar  party  overwhelmed  by  a 
blizzard,  or  arriving  at  the  place  where  the  food  was 
stored  and  finding  that  the  store  has  been  broken  open 
and  everything  eaten  by  bears.  No  possibility  of  success 
remains ;  our  strength  is  exhausted ;  the  most  hopeful  has 
to  face  the  certainty  of  death  from  cold  and  starvation. 
Despondency  gives  place  to  despair;  we  resign  all  hope, 
our  efforts  relax  and  we  lie  down  to  die.  Or,  if  we  are 
resolute  men,  we  do  first  whatever  seems  worth  doing; 
we  write  a  letter  of  farewell  to  our  friends  or  bring  the 
log-book  faithfully  up  to  date,  in  the  one  hope  that  is 
still  possible,  the  hope  that  our  remains  will  be  found  by 
other  explorers.     If  we  are  weak,  we  give  way  to  the 


4o6  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

impulse  of  distress^  and  cry  aloud  for  help,  until  we 
realise  the  utter  futility  of  that  impulse  also,  and  complete 
despair  overwhelms  us. 

Shand  finds  great  difficulty  in  attempting  to  define  the 
tendency  and  end  of  despair.  In  literature  he  finds  many 
statements  to  the  effect  that  despair  imparts  a  new  and 
desperate  energy  to  our  efforts,  and  he  formulates  four 
laws  of  despair:  (i)  "Despair  tends  to  evoke  an  energy 
in  desire  and  a  resolution  capable  of  attempting  the  most 
dangerous  and  uncertain  actions;"  (2)  "Despair  excludes 
all  hope  from  desire,  and  only  arises  after  all  hope  is 
excluded;"^  (3)  "Despair  tends  to  weaken  and  discourage 
desire."  But  the  first  law  states  that  despair  evokes  an 
energy  in  desire,  and  therefore  a  fourth  law  is  needed 
to  reconcile  these  contradictory  statements,  and  we  read  : 
(4)  "Despair  tends  to  weaken  the  desire  which  submits 
to  its  influence,  and  to  strengthen  the  desire  which 
triumphs  over  it."  This  goes  a  long  way  in  the  per- 
sonification of  desires  and  the  emotions  of  desire.  We 
are  asked  to  regard  despair  as  a  new  force  with  which 
the  primary  desire  (of  whose  system  it  is  said  to  be  a 
part)  enters  into  a  conflict  like  that  of  two  persons;  the 
primary  desire  struggles  against  this  new  force,  and 
either  absorbs  it  and  adds  it  to  itself,  or  succumbs  to  it 
in  despair;  and  we  are  left  to  imagine  the  emotion  of 
despair  triumphant  and  exulting  over  the  prostrate  desire. 

The  true  explanation  of  those  forms  of  conduct  which 
justify  such  phrases  as  "the  courage  of  despair"  is,  I 
think,  as  follows :  So  long  as  there  appears  any  possibility 
of  attaining  our  desired  end,  we  carefully  follow  out  our 

1  See  p.  443. 

2  This  sentence  illustrates  very  well  the  dangers  of  admit- 
ting to  scientific  discourse  the  looseness  of  language  per- 
missible In  poetry.  How  is  despair  to  exclude  hope,  if  it 
only  arises  after  all  hope  has  already  been  excluded? 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  407 

adopted  plan,  adapting  our  actions  in'  detail  at  each  stage 
by  taking  anxious  thought.  But,  when  we  see  that  all  our 
carefully  thought-out  plans  are  of  no  avail,  we  may  lose 
our  self-control,  relax  our  intellectual  efforts,  and  aban- 
don ourselves  to  the  crude  instinctive  impulses  which 
underlay  all  our  deliberate  efforts ;  and  then  we  strive 
blindly,  wildly,  purely  instinctively,  like  animals.  Our 
polar  party,  arrived  at  the  crisis  we  have  imagined,  might 
throw  aside  all  its  equipment,  all  its  cohesion  and  organi- 
sations and  plans,  and  break  up  into  its  units ;  each  man 
might  rush  blindly  on  with,  as  we  say,  the  blind  courage 
of  despair.  But  if  this  is  courage,  it  is  the  courage  of  an 
animal  impelled  to  struggle  to  the  end  by  purely  instinct- 
ive fear  or  anger. 

Hume  formulated  a  fundamental  law  of  desire,  which 
explains  the  attitude  of  despair,  when  he  wrote :  "We  are 
no  sooner  acquainted  with  the  impossibility  of  satisfying 
any  desire,  than  the  desire  itself  vanishes."  This  state- 
ment goes  perhaps  too  far;  it  is  an  exaggeration  of  the 
truth.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  intellectual  appre- 
hension of  the  impossibility  of  attaining  the  desired  end 
terminates  all  our  efforts  after  it ;  we  cease  to  look 
forward  to  the  end  or  to  strive  towards  it.  Our  attitude 
becomes  wholly  retrospective ;  but  the  desire  lives  on  in 
the  peculiar  form  of  regret.  Suppose  that  you  have 
desired  to  help  a  friend  in  difficulties,  but  have  delayed 
too  long  or  have  taken  insufficiently  active  steps  to  pre- 
vent his  dying,  overwhelmed  by  his  misfortune.  Your 
desire  is  not  entirely  extinguished.  In  a  sense  it  may 
become  more  acute  than  ever  before.  You  say:  "Oh, 
how  I  wish  that  I  had  done  more  or  acted  more 
promptly!"  expressing  clearly  the  persistence  of  your 
desire;  and,  though  nothing  can  be  done,  you  think  of 
all  the  things  you   might   have  done,  if  you  only  had 


4o8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

understood  the  urgency  of  his  need;  and  every  such 
thought  in  which  your  desire  now  expresses  itself  is 
colored  with  the  pain  of  a  bafifled  and  thwarted  desire 
that  cannot  achieve  its  end.  That  is  regret;  and,  if  self- 
reproach  enters  into  the  state,  it  is  one  of  remorse. 

Despair,  then,  is  the  turning  point  at  which  we  cease 
to  look  forward,  and,  instead,  look  back  with  the  finally 
thwarted  desire  which  is  regret.  Our  polar  explorers, 
sitting  in  their  tent  awaiting  death,  will,  if  they  are  not 
utterly  prostrated,  be  filled  with  regret — regret  that  they 
did  not  take  this  or  that  step,  that  they  did  not  start  out 
earlier  on  their  return  journey,  regret  that  they  did  not 
make  their  stores  of  food  at  shorter  intervals,  regret  for 
all  the  many  things  that  might  have  made  the  difference 
between  success  and  failure.  But  regret  is  no  more  a 
new  force  added  to  the  primary  desire  than  is  confidence 
or  hope,  anxiety,  despondency,  or  despair. 

We  have  hitherto  considered  the  derived  emotions  as 
they  attend  the  operation  of  a  desire  of  great  intensity; 
but  it  must  be  recognised  that  in  fainter  forms  the  same 
states  of  feeling  accompany  and  qualify  our  most  trivial 
efforts.  For  example,  you  set  out  in  good  time,  as  you 
believe,  to  catch  your  morning  train  to  town.  Having 
plenty  of  time,  you  walk  in  confidence,  never  doubting 
your  catching  it.  Then  you  remember  that  your  watch 
has  been  irregular  of  late,  and  you  notice  other  persons 
hurrying  towards  the  railway  station ;  hope  replaces  con- 
fidence. Or  shall  we  say,  in  poetical  language,  that  hope 
drives  out  confidence  ?  You  ask  the  time  of  a  passer-by, 
and,  according  to  his  statement,  your  watch  is  slow ;  hope 
passes  into  anxiety,  and  you  begin  to  look  for  a  cab  or 
bus  or  other  means  of  accelerating  your  passage.  The 
church  clock  confirms  the  opinion  of  the  passer-by,  and 
anxiety  passes  into  despondency;  it  seems  hardly  worth 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  409 

while  to  hurry  on,  your  chance  of  catching  the  train  is 
so  small.  From  a  distance  you  see  the  train  arrive,  and 
despondency  becomes  despair;  and,  as  it  steams  away, 
despair  passes  into  regret.  Just  in  proportion  to  the 
intensity  of  your  desire  to  catch  the  train  will  be  the 
intensity  of  these  emotions. 

In  the  light  of  the  foregoing  discussion  I  would  add 
a  few  words  to  what  was  said  in  Chapter  V.,  of  joy  and 
sorrow ;  for  these  two  emotions  are  closely  allied  to  the 
emotions  discussed  in  the  foregoing  pages. 

Shand  regards  sorrow  as  one  of  the  primary  emotions 
and  as  one  of  the  great  forces  of  character.  I  maintain 
that  it  is  rather  a  derived  emotion,  one  of  the  retro- 
spective emotions  of  desire;  that,  in  short,  it  is  a  special 
form  of  regret,  essentially  a  regret  that  springs  from  the 
sentiment  of  love,  and  therefore  a  tender  regret.  The 
most  frequent  and  typical  occasion  of  sorrow  is  the  death 
of  one  we  love.  Consider  the  sequence  of  emotions  we 
experience  during  the  fatal  sickness  of  a  much-loved 
child.  While  the  child  is  in  perfect  health,  love's  desire 
to  cherish  and  protect  its  object  attains  an  ever  renewed 
and  progressive  satisfaction  in  loving  services  rendered 
and  in  marks  of  love  returned.  The  actions  prompted 
by  the  desire  of  the  sentiment  of  love  are  performed  with 
confidence.  Such  confidence  is,  I  submit,  a  variety  of 
confidence  properly  called  joy.  It  is  a  joyful  activity 
attended  by  a  joyful  tender  emotion.  Its  peculiarity  is 
that  desire  is  progressively  satisfied  while  it  continues 
unabated.  Let  the  child  show  some  slight  indisposition, 
and  we  hope  he  will  soon  be  well;  our  tender  care  is 
redoubled.  He  grows  worse  rather  than  better,  and  we 
become  anxious,  hope  alternating  with  despondency,  and 
yielding  place  to  it  more  and  more  as  the  little  patient's 
strength  ebbs  away  and  the  symptoms  grow  more  serious. 


410  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

It  becomes  clear  that  he  cannot  Hve,  and  we  despair. 
He  dies,  and  despair  gives  place  to  sorrow :  for  our  atti- 
tude is  no  longer  prospective,  but  wholly  retrospective. 
Desire  no  longer  prompts  to  action;  the  conative  ten- 
dencies of  the  sentiment,  especially  the  protective 
impulse,  still  prompt  us  to  occupy  our  minds  with  its 
object;  we  cannot  dismiss  it,  and  would  not  if  we  could; 
we  hug  our  sorrow ;  for  the  sentiment  is  alive,  and  its 
impulses  working  constantly  within  us  are  baffled  and 
painful  just  because  they  can  attain  no  satisfaction;  we 
regret  that  we  did  not  do  this  or  that,  take  this  or  that 
precaution,  act  earlier  or  more  energetically.  Sorrow  is, 
then,  a  tender  regret.  It  seems  to  me  clear  that  we  never 
experience  an  emotion  that  can  properly  be  called  sorrow, 
save  in  connection  with  a  sentiment  of  love  and  the  com- 
plete thwarting  of  its  impulses,  which  can  hardly  be 
brought  about  in  any  other  way  than  by  the  destruction 
of  its  object. 

If  this  be  true,  then  clearly  sorrow  is  not  a  primary 
but  a  derived  emotion;  and,  like  those  other  emotions 
of  desire,  prospective  and  retrospective,  it  springs  from 
no  specific  conative  disposition,  has  no  impulse  or  ten- 
dency of  its  own,  is  not  a  force  in  itself ;  and,  having  no 
disposition,  it  cannot  be  organised  within  the  sentiment 
of  love  nor  yet  within  that  of  hate  (as  Shand  maintains). 
Shand  describes  sorrow  as  having  three  distinct  tenden- 
cies or  impulses:  (i)  To  cry  out  for  aid  and  comfort; 
(2)  to  cling  to  its  object  and  to  resist  consolation;  (3)  to 
restore  its  object.  Of  these  alleged  tendencies  the  first 
and  second  are  contradictory  or  incompatibles ;  the  ten- 
dency to  cling  to  the  object  and  to  restore  it  is  the 
tendency  of  the  tender  emotion  organized  in  the  sentiment 
of  love.  The  tendency  to  cry  out  for  aid  and  comfort 
when  our  powers  are  completely  baffled  no  doubt  does 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  411 

often  enter  into  sorrow;  but  I  submit  that  it  does  not 
essentially  belong  to  it.  It  seems  to  be  the  expression 
of  a  primary  instinctive  disposition  which  I  have 
neglected  to  distinguish  in  the  earlier  chapters.  This 
tendency  seems  to  manifest  itself  whenever  our  strength 
proves  wholly  insufficient  to  achieve  the  end  that  we 
keenly  strive  after,  no  matter  what  may  be  the  nature 
of  the  conation  at  work  in  us.  The  working  of  this 
impulse  to  cry  out  for  aid  and  comfort  seems  to  be 
accompanied  by  a  true  primary  emotion  which,  perhaps, 
is  best  called  "distress."  This  is  the  emotion  displayed 
so  freely  and  frequently  by  the  infant  when  he  wails 
aloud.  We  learn  to  suppress  its  outward  marks ;  but, 
though  we  can  suppress  our  cries  and  sobs  or  transmute 
them  to  a  mere  sigh,  we  cannot  so  easily  prevent  the 
watering  of  the  eyes,  which  is  a  part  of  this  instinctive 
expression;  and  even  the  strong  man,  when  he  has 
reached  the  utmost  limit  of  his  strength  in  the  pursuit 
of  any  strongly  desired  end,  may  break  down  completely, 
sobbing,  freely  shedding  tears,  or  crying  aloud  to  God 
for  help. 

Shand  speaks  of  the  sorrow  of  a  child  when  we 
forcibly  take  away  from  him  his  toy.  But  this  emotion, 
where  it  is  not  predominantly  anger,  is,  I  submit,  the 
emotion  of  distress ;  and  the  common  sequence  upon  such 
an  occasion  is  an  outburst  of  anger,  followed  by  the  tears 
and  cries  of  distress,  when  the  child  finds  that  his  angry 
efforts  are  unavailing. 

Shand  maintains  that  hate,  equally  with  love,  may  gen- 
erate sorrow,  when  its  object  is  seen  to  be  healthy  and 
prosperous.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  a  misuse  of,  or  at 
least  a  laxity  in  the  use  of,  the  term,  which  we  should 
strive  to  avoid;  for  only  by  the  strictest  care  in  our 
terminology  can  we  hope  to  attain  to   further  under- 


412  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

standing  and  general  agreement  in  this  difficult  province 
of  psychology.  And  it  is  the  business  of  scientific  writers 
to  specialize  the  terms  by  which  in  popular  speech  our 
emotional  states  are  denoted  with  little  discrimination 
of  their  finer  differences,  rather  than  to  ignore  the  finer 
shades  of  difference  in  wellnigh  synonymous  words. 

I  submit,  then,  that  our  state  of  feeling  on  witnessing 
the  success  and  prosperity  of  a  hated  person  should  not 
be  called  sorrow,  but  rather  chagrin.  This  feeling  is  also 
one  of  the  retrospective  emotions  of  desire,  but  of  the 
desire  of  hate,  the  desire  to  destroy,  to  bring  down,  or  in 
any  way  thwart  the  hated  object.  It  also  is  a  form  of 
regret,  a  regret  having  no  element  of  tender  emotion,  but 
only  the  bitterness  of  thwarted  anger  and  increased  fear. 
And,  if  we  have  been  striving  against  the  hated  object 
wdth  all  our  powers  and  find  our  utmost  efforts  brought 
to  nought,  this  feeling  will  include  an  element  of  distress, 
manifested  perhaps  by  tears  and  sobs  or  even  v/ild  cries 
for  help. 

I  turn  now  to  consider  an  objection  that  may  be  raised 
against  this  simplified  view  of  these  emotions  of  desire. 
In  an  earlier  chapter  it  was  said  that  we  properly  speak 
of  a  man  as  having  a  timid  or  fearful,  an  irascible,  an 
inquisitive,  a  humble,  or  a  self-assertive  disposition.  The 
word  disposition  is  here  used  in  the  larger  sense,  namely, 
to  denote  the  sum  total  of  the  person's  natural  disposi- 
tions; and  Ihe  qualifying  adjective  denotes  the  predom- 
inance in  the  total  disposition  of  some  one  of  the  primary 
affective-conative  dispositions.  Surely,  it  may  be  said, 
we  may  with  equal  propriety  speak  of  a  hopeful,  an 
anxious,  or  a  despondent  disposition.  And,  it  may  be 
asked,  if  that  is  a  proper  use  of  language,  does  it  not 
justify  Shand's  assumption  that  each  of  these  emotions 
springs  from  its  own  innate  disposition,  and  is  a  primary 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  413 

emotion  in  tlie  same  sense  as  fear,  anger,  disgust,  tender- 
ness, curiosity,  or  positive  and  negative  self-feeling? 
If  a  man  of  timid  or  irascible  disposition  owes  this 
peculiarity  to  the  great  strength  or  easy  excitability  of  the 
disposition  of  fear  or  of  anger,  must  we  not  assume  that 
a  man  of  hopeful  or  of  despondent  disposition  owes  this 
peculiarity  in  the  same  way  to  the  native  strength  or 
excitability  of  a  disposition  of  hope  or  despondency? 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  common  use  of  language 
does  not  seem  to  justify  this  assumption  of  parellelism 
of  the  emotions  of  desire  with  the  primary  emotions. 
But,  again,  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  attach  undue 
importance  to  the  common  forms  of  speech.  If  the 
facts  can  be  more  simply  explained,  we  may  disregard 
this  evidence  of  common  speech  and  accept  the  simpler 
explanation.  First,  I  submit  that  the  individual  peculiar- 
ities which  we  are  now  considering,  such  as  hopefulness 
and  anxiousness,  may  be  more  properly  spoken  of  as 
peculiarities  of  temper  rather  than  of  disposition.  I 
suggest  that  we  should  speak  of  a  man  as  having  an 
irascible  or  timid  disposition,  but  a  confident  or  hopeful 
or  despondent  temper.  Now,  if  these  emotions  and  the 
corresponding  peculiarities  of  temper  were  rooted  each 
in  its  own  innate  disposition,  as  are  the  primary  emotions, 
we  should  expect  to  find  that  they  are  independent 
variables.  The  primary  emotions  are  independently 
variable;  that  is  to  say  the  native  intensity  and 
excitability  of  each  of  them  varies  from  man  to  man, 
independently  of  the  intensity  and  excitability  of  the  rest 
of  them;  but  obviously  the  derived  emotions  are  not. 
The  hopeful  temper  is  a  lesser  degree  of  the  confident 
temper;  the  despondent  temper  is  closely  allied  to  the 
despairing  temper,  and  related  to  it  as  a  lesser  degree  of 
the  same  tendency;  while  the  anxious  temper  lies  between 


414  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

the  hopeful  and  the  despondent ;  and  every  gradation 
occurs  between  the  extremes  of  the  confident  and  the 
despairing  tempers. 

But  there  are  other  forms  of  temper:  there  is  the 
steadfast  temper,  and  the  fickle  or  variable  temper;  and 
there  seems  to  be  a  range  of  native  varieties  of  temper 
of  which  the  extremes  are  denoted  by  the  terms  violent 
and  equable  or  placid  temper.  It  seems  clear  that  these 
peculiarities  of  temper,  which  in  the  main  are  native 
endowments,  are  very  important  as  determinants  of 
character,  exerting  considerable  influence  upon  the  course 
of  development  of  each  man's  character  throughout  his 
life,  but  especially  in  youth.  How  then  are  we  to 
account  for  them?  I  presume  that  even  Mr.  Shand 
would  not  attribute  fickleness  of  temper  to  a  special 
innate  disposition  of  fickleness,  nor  steadfastness  nor 
violence  nor  placidity  to  corresponding  special  disposi- 
tions. Consider  a  number  of  men,  all  of  well-balanced 
innate  disposition,  that  is  to  say,  endowed  with  disposi- 
tions in  which  no  one  of  the  primary  affective-conative 
dispositions  is  disproportionately  strong.  These  men 
may  nevertheless  differ  widely  in  respect  of  temper. 

The  principal  factors  of  temper  seem  to  be  of  three 
kinds.  First,  the  conative  tendencies,  though  well  bal- 
anced, may  all  be  strong  or  all  weak;  or  any  or  all  of 
them  may  stand  in  some  intermediate  position  in  a  weak- 
strong  scale.  Secondly,  independently  of  their  intensity, 
they  may  be  either  extremely  persistent  or*  but  little  per- 
sistent. That  is  to  say,  each  man  is  natively  endowed 
with  conative  tendencies  (a  will,  if  one  uses  that  word 
in  the  widest  sense  as  denoting  the  general  power  of 
striving,  as  distinct  from  the  will  in  the  more  special 
sense  in  which  it  is  identical  with,  or  is  the  expression  of, 
the  developed  character)  which  have  two  independently 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  415 

variable  attributes,  namely  intensity  and  persistence ;  they 
may  be  low  or  high  in  either  scale  independently  of  their 
position  in  the  other.  Thirdly,  a  great  factor  of  temper, 
also  independently  variable,  is  the  native  susceptibility 
of  conation  to  the  influences  of  pleasure  and  of  pain. 
There  are  some  men  whose  desires  and  strivings  seem  to 
be  very  easily  and  strongly  influenced  by  pleasure 
and  by  pain.  Pleasure  greatly  strengthens,  supports 
and  confirms  their  conative  tendencies;  and  pain  works 
powerfully  in  the  opposite  way,  strongly  checking,  de- 
pressing and  diverting  their  strivings  and  desires.  These 
are  the  people  of  whom  we  say  that  they  have  very 
sensitive  feelings.  Some  men,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
comparatively  indifferent  to  pleasure  and  to  pain.  They 
are  not  easily  turned  aside  by  pain,  nor  strongly  led  on 
by  pleasure.  Their  feelings  are  not  very  sensitive,  we 
say.  It  is  impossible  to  know  whether  this  difference 
is  more  properly  described  by  saying  that  the  strivings 
of  men  of  the  former  class  are  more  strongly  affected  by 
a  given  degree  of  pleasure  or  of  pain,  or  by  the  statement 
that  the  pleasure  and  the  pain  they  experience  are  more 
acute,  and  therefore  exert  greater  influence  upon  cona- 
tion. But  that  men  do  differ  widely  by  native  constitu- 
tion in  this  way  seems  clear;  and  the  differences  are  no 
doubt  most  obvious  in  respect  of  the  influence  of  bodily 
pleasures  and  pains. 

If  it  is  true,  as  I  suggest,  that  the  conative  endowment 
of  individuals  varies  in  these  three  ways,  in  respect  of 
these  three  attributes,  namely,  intensity,  persistence,  and 
affectability,  we  can,  I  think,  explain  all  the  varieties  of 
temper  as  being  conjunctions  of  different  degrees  of  these 
three  attributes.  There  will  be  eight  well-marked  types, 
corresponding  to  the  eight  possible  combinations  :  ( i )  The 
most  steadfast  and  confident  temper  is  that  which  results 


4i6  SOCIAL  PS!^CHOLOGY 

from  the  conjunction  of  high  intensity  and  persistency 
with  low  afifectability.  (2)  The  most  fickle  and  shallow 
temper  results  from  the  opposite  conjunction,  namely, 
high  afifectability  with  low  intensity  and  persistence. 
(3)  The  conjunction  of  high  affectability  and  high  in- 
tensity with  low  persistence  gives  a  violent  unstable 
temper;  the  sort  of  man  who  alternates  between  confi- 
dence or  hope  and  despondency  or  despair.  (4)  The 
despondent  temper  is  that  which  combines  low  affecta- 
biUty  and  persistency  with  high  intensity.  (5)  Great 
affectability  combined  with  great  persistency  and  low 
intensity  gives  the  anxious  temper.  (6)  The  hopeful 
temper  results  from  the  conjunction  of  all  three  attributes 
in  high  degree.  (7)  The  placid  temper  combines  high 
persistency  with  low  intensity  and  affectability;  and  (8) 
the  conjunction  of  all  three  attributes  in  low  degree  gives 
the  sluggish  temper.  It  is  possible  that  we  ought  to 
recognise  two  further  native  peculiarities,  the  one  con- 
sisting in  greater  liability  to  the  influence  of  pleasure 
than  of  pain,  and  the  other  the  converse  of  this :  these 
would  account  more  adequately  perhaps  for  the  hopeful 
and  the  despondent  tempers,  and  are  perhaps  required 
for  their  explanation. 

If  the  foregoing  account  of  the  peculiarities  of  temper 
is  approximately  correct,  the  argument  from  the  usage 
of  common  speech,  when  it  refers  to  hopeful,  anxious, 
or  despondent  dispositions,  need  carry  no  serious  weight 
against  the  view  of  the  nature  of  the  derived  emotions 
which  is  suggested  in  this  chapter. 

An  objection  of  a  different  kind  may  be  raised  to  this 
view.  It  may  be  asked — If  hope  and  despair  and 
despondency  and  the  other  derived  emotions  are  not 
conative  forces  sustaining  thought  and  controlling  action, 
what  function  have  they  to  discharge?     Of  what  use  are 


THE  DERIVED  EMOTIONS  417 

they  to  us?  This  is  a  form  of  a  wider  question  which 
may  be  asked  of  all  the  emotions,  considered  as  modes 
of  experience.  And,  of  course,  the  question  has  been 
asked,  in  a  still  more  general  form,  of  experience  or 
consciousness  in  general.  Leaving  that  widest  form  of 
the  question,  I  will  attempt  only  to  suggest  an  answer 
to  the  question  which  is  applicable  both  to  the  primary 
emotions  and  to  the  derived  emotions.  I  suggest  that 
those  qualitatively  distinct  modes  of  feeling  which  we 
call  the  primary  emotions  have  the  specific  function  of 
enabling  the  creature  that  experiences  them  to  recognize 
its  own  state  and  tendency  at  the  moment  of  experience, 
and  also  the  state  and  tendency  of  other  creatures  of  its 
own  species.  We  may  see  the  value  for  the  control  of  be- 
haviour of  such  qualitatively  distinct  modes  of  feeling, 
if  we  imagine  a  man  or  an  animal  whose  instinctive 
reactions  were  evoked  without  any  such  accompaniment, 
one  in  which  the  various  instinctive  modes  of  behaviour 
were  excited  without  any  change  of  feeling,  or  in  which 
all  the  instinctive  reactions  were  accompanied  by  the 
same  quality  of  feeling,  a  perfectly  general  feeling  of 
emotional  excitement  without  specific  varieties  of  quality. 
Is  it  not  obvious  that  such  a  creature  would  be  greatly 
handicapped  in  comparison  with  one  in  which  the  excite- 
ment of  each  instinctive  mode  of  behaviour  is  reflected 
in  consciousness  by  a  specific  quality  of  feeling?  For 
the  latter  learns  to  recognise  each  of  these,  qualities  of 
feeling,  and  through  them  becomes  aware  of  the  tendency 
of  its  action;  and  this  is  the  necessary  first  step  towards 
intelligent  control  of  action.  The  other  creature  would 
find  itself  carrying  out  each  step  of  the  train  of  in- 
stinctive behaviour  without  having  any  power  of  fore- 
seeing the  coming  phase,  and  therefore  without  any 
possibility  of  preventing,   controlling,  or  modifying  its 


4i8  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

actions.  The  qualities  of  the  primary  emotions  serve, 
I  suggest,  to  enable  mind  or  intelligence  to  get  a  grip 
upon  instinct,  and  so  begin  to  establish  the  control  which 
in  the  well-developed  character  becomes  wellnigh  com- 
plete. It  seems  obvious  that  the  emotion-qualities  sub- 
serve this  function,  and  are  indispensable  to  it  in 
ourselves.  One  feels  the  awakening  of,  say,  anger  or 
fear  within  one  as  the  behaviour  of  another  man  becomes 
insulting  or  threatening,  and  says  to  oneself — Now  I 
must  keep  a  tight  hold  on  myself.  Because  the  quality 
of  the  emotion  implies  the  kind  of  actions  which  we  shall 
be  liable  instinctively  to  display,  we  are  enabled  in  some 
measure  to  counteract  and  control  the  tendencies  to  such 
actions.  And,  though  it  is  more  difficult  to  describe  or 
to  imagine  the  working  of  a  similar  process  in  the  animal 
mind,  we  may  fairly  presume  that  on  its  lower  plane  and 
in  simpler  fashion  the  emotional  experience  of  the  animal 
subserves  this  same  function.  Further,  if  we  consider  how 
widespread  and  important  among  men  and  all  the  gregar- 
ious animals  are  the  reactions  due  to  the  primitive  sympa- 
thetic tendency,  we  shall  see  that  the  emotional  qualities 
play  an  essential  part  in  enabling  each  of  us  to  understand 
the  state  of  mind  of  our  fellows,  and  therefore  to  some 
extent  to  foresee  and  adapt  ourselves  to  the  actions  they 
are  about  to  display.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  could 
ever  achieve  any  sympathetic  insight  into  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  our  fellow  men,  if  we  were  not  equipped  with 
these  capacities  for  the  specific  qualities  of  emotion  and 
the  primitive  tendency  to  experience  them  when  we 
witness  their  outward  manifestations  in  our  fellows. 

The  derived  emotions  may  be  supposed  to  subserve  a 
similar  function  in  human  life,  although  in  the  animal 
world  they  seem  to  occur  only  in  the  most  rudimentary 
forms. 


INDEX 


Abstract  sentiments,  224 
Action  in  line  of  greatest  re- 
sistance, 257 
Action  in  spite  of  pain,  381 
Adam  Smith,  262 
Addison  on  instinct,  30 
Admiration,  138 

"  aesthetic,  233 

Altruism  and  parental  instinct, 

79 
Amok,  146 

Ancestor  worship,  281 
Anger,  61 
Animism,  311 
AncEtic  sentience,  367 
Anxiety,  142 
Approval,  149,  217 

"  is  it  an  emotion?  223 

Aristocracies  and  imitation,  351 
Art  and  social  solidarity,  353 
Association  psychology,  16,  45 
Atkinson,  J.  J.,  on  primal  law, 

288 
Attention  and  volition,  248 
Attraction  of  the  like,  308 
Authority  and  the  development 

of    self-regarding   sentiment, 

199 
Awe,  135 

"     in  religion,  312 
Aztecs,  317 


B 

Bagehot,  W.,  289 

Bain,  A.,  45,  72,  79 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  94,  106,  149 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  327 

Bashfulness,  150 

Beck,  A.,  340 

Behaviour,  marks  of,  361 

"  increased    efficiency 

of,  360 

Bentham,  9,  159 

Birth-rate  and  the  social  sanc- 
tions, 276 

Bosanquet,    Professor    B.,    on 
action,  384 

Bosanquet,  Mrs.,  12 

Bradley,  F.  H.,   114,  384 

Bramwell,  J.  M.,  254 


Cake  of  custom,  316 
Capital  punishment,  78 
Character,  264 

"  strong,  266 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  155 
Collective  mental  process,  334 

"  voice  of  society,  201 

Communal  responsibility,  318 
Comte,  I 
Conation,  29 
Conations,  scale  of,  256 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Conative  unity  of  trains  of  ac- 
tion, i8i 

Conative  dispositions,  368 

Conduct  and  behaviour,  359 

Conditions    of    pleasure    and 
pain,  2,11 

Conflict  of  crude  impulses,  182 

Conscience,  8,  235 

Contempt,  140 

Contra-imitation,  352 
"      -suggestion,  104 

Control  of  pain,  379 

Conversion  of  means  to  ends, 
356 

Courts,  influence  of  royal,  350 

Cousin  v.,  12 

Crowds,  89,  305 

Curiosity  and  evolution,  322 
"         and    social    progress, 

322 
"         instinct  of,  59 

D 

Darwin,  Charles,  5,  14,  23,  63 
Deficiencies  of  psychology,  2,  3 
De  Lapouge,  277 
Descartes,  125 
Desire  and  feeling,  Zl^ 
Dill  on  Roman  societj',  277 
Disapproval,  148,  223 
Disgust,  58 

Disposition  defined,  124 
Diversities  of  moral  codes,  218 
Durkheim,  2 


Emotion,  criteria  of,  51 
"         defined,  49 
"         of  anger,  61 
"         of  disgust,  57 
"         of  elation,  64 
"         of  fear,  52 
"         of  subjection,  64 
"         of  wonder,  59 
"         tender,  68 

Emulation,  92,  115,  300 

Envy,  141 

Ethics,  7 

Eugenics,  302 

Experimental  methods,  7 

Extension     of     self-regarding 
sentiment,  212 


Family,  the,  274 
Fascination,   141 
Fashion,  341 
Fear,  52 

"      in  birds,  36 

"      in  religion,  310,  315,  319 
Feeling-tone  of  emotion,  155 
Fielding  Hall,  282 
Flint,  Prof.,  12 
Forel,  Auguste,  85 
Fouillee,  A.,  13 
Fowler,  T.,  195,  219 
Free  will,  240 
Fustel  de  Coulanges,  282,  315 


Economics,  10 
Egoist,  210 


Galton,  F.,  87 
General  paralysis,  66 
Giddings,  F.,  305- 
Gratitude,  136 


INDEX 


Green,  T.  H.,  g,  i6i,  225,  391 
Groos,  Karl,  31,  112 
Group  selection,  295 

H 

Habit,  45.  354 

"       and  custom,  354 
"       law  of,  118 

Habitual  action,  382 

Happiness,  159 

Hard  choice,  258 

Hate,  141 

Hatred,  development  of  senti- 
ment of,  169 

Hearn,  Lafcadio,  281 

Hedonism,  8 
i      Herbart,  384 
I       Herding  in  towns,  304 
I       History  of  social  sciences,  4 
,        Hoffding,  H.,  244 

Hose,   Charles,  295 

Hunger  and  feeling,  376 

Hypnosis,  100 

Hypnotic  suggestion,  254 


Ideo-motor  action,  384 
Imitation,  105,  333 

"  varieties  of,  104 

Inhibition  and  volition,  250 
Instinct  defined,  24,  25,  30 
"         in  insects,  24,  25 
"        its  relation  to  emotion, 

35,  44,  48 
"        loose  usage  illustrated, 

22 
"        modification  of,  32,  35 
"        not  mechanical,  28 


Instinct  of  acquisition,  91,  329 
"  of  construction,  91,  331 
"        of  curiosity,  59 

of  flight,  51 
"        of  pugnacity,  61,  285 
"        of     reproduction,      85, 

272 
"        of  repulsion,  57 
"        of  subjection,  64,  328 
"        of  self-display,  64,  327 
"        the  gregarious,  87,  175, 

303 
"        the  parental,  68,  274 

Instinctive  behaviour,  25 

Instincts,  the  prime  movers,  28 

Introspection,  6,  15 


James  on  will,  236 

"      William,  24,  88,  236 
Japanese    and     Chinese,    pug- 
nacity in,  298 
Jealousy,  86,  142 
Jews,  continuously  prolific,  280 
Joy,  156 

Judgment,  moral,  220 
Jurisprudence,  13 

K 

Kant,  7,  387 

Kidd,  Benjamin,  277,  284,  297 
Kirby  and  Spence,  30 
"Kreutzer  Sonata,"  144 


Lang,  Andrew,  288 
Lange-James    theory   of    emo- 
tions, 48,  54 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Latah,  io8 

Legal  attitude,  227 

Leuba  on  fear,  320 

Levels     of     conduct     defined, 
186 

Literature     and     moral     senti- 
ments. 230 

Loathing,  141 

Love,  127 

"      of  justice,  231 

M 

Mackenzie  Wallace,  284 
Magic,  324 

"        and    religion,    relation 
of,  313 
Marshall,  Rutgers,  50 
Master-sentiment,  266 
Mechanism  and  morality,  364 
Mental  forces,  3 
Mercier,  C,  148 
Military  selection,  296 
Mill,  J.  S.,  9,  159 
Modern  humanitarianism,  283 
Moral  evolution  outlined,  321 

"      faculty,  theory  of,  386 

"      indignation,  76,  82 

"      judgment   and   emotion, 
219 

"      judgment    and    sugges- 
tion, 221 

"      judgment,    original    and 
imitative,  222 

"      sentiments,  224 

"      tradition,  226 
Morality,  its  evolution,  321 
Mouse  as  cause  of  fear,  56 
Muirhead,    Prof.    J.    H.,    374, 

2,77 


N 
National  characteristics,  337 


Omens,  315 


Parental  sentiment,  growth  of, 

170 
Peckham,  Dr.  and  Mrs.,  31 
Persistence  of  effort,  361 
Personification       of       natural 

forces,  312 
Philosophy  of  history,  12 
Physical  and  mental   sciences, 

369 
Pity,  T^,  84,  158 
Play,  theory  of,  ill 

"     its  socialising  tendencies, 
352 
Pleasure  and  pain,  44 
Political  economy,  lO 

"         science,  12 
Population  and  instincts,  273 
Praise  and  blame,  influence  of, 

194,  203 
Prestige,  102 

"  and  imitation,  346 

"  suggestion,  102 

Preyer,  W.,  no 
Pride,  198 
Prig,  263 
Primal   law,  288 
Primitive  sympathy,  theory  of, 

97 
Pseudo-altruism,  210 

"      -instincts,  93 
Psychological  Hedonism,  371 


INDEX 


public    opinion,    influence    of, 
194 

"      opinion,  limitations,  216 
Pugnacity  and  evolution,  290 
"  and  morality,  295 

"  and  war,  287 

"  in  Borneo,  286,  295 

Punans,  329 

Purpose  and  mechanism,  2>^2 
Purposive  activity,  vi^ider  con- 
ception of,  364 
"  and  idea  of  end,  365 

Q 

Quasi-altruistic  sentiments,  211 

R 

Rashdall,     Hastings,     18,     235, 

386 
Rational  beings,  386 
Reason  and  action,  386 
Recapitulation,  law  of,  112 
Recollection,  249 
Regular,  381 

Religion  and  morality,  320 
"Religious  instinct,"  91,  309 
Renan,  91 
Reproach,  141 
Resentment,  145 
Respect,  166 
Responsibility,  238 
Retribution,  13 
Revenge,  145 
Reverence,  136 

"  its  genesis,  318 

Ribot,  Th.,  50,  64,  126 
Robertson  Smith,  340 
Ruling  passion,  265 


Samaritan,  the  Good,  81 
Schallmayer,  277 
Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  241 
Schneider,  G.  H.,  24,  2,7,  2Vi> 
Scope  of  psychology,  6,  15 
Scorn,  140 
Self,  187 

"     -consciousness,     develop- 
ment of,  187 

"     -control,    sentiment    for, 

259 
"     -love,  166 

"     -regarding  sentiment,  de- 
velopment of,  199 
"     -regarding  sentiment,  ex- 
tensions of,  211 
Self  not  a  fabric  of  ideas,  384 
Sensation  and  pain,  378 

"         and  pleasure,  380 
Sense  of  duty,  387 

"  and    character, 

389 
Sentiment,  nature  of,  126 

"  physiological    inter- 

pretations of,  129 
Sentimentalists,  264 
Sentiments,    are    they    innate? 
164 
"  development      of, 

168,  170 
"  maternal,  170 

Serenity,  268 
Shame,  67,  149 
Shand,  A.  R,  50,  82,  126,  164 
Sidgwick,  H.,  8,  386 
Slavery,  283 
Smith,  Adam,  62 
Sociability,  90 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Social  prohibition,  194 
"       uniformities,  336 

Sorrow,  84,  157 

Spencer,  Herbert,  23,  27,  45,  95 
"         and  Gillen,  276 

Steinmetz,  146 

Stoics,  7 

Stout,  G.  F.,  245,  254,  391 

Stuart-Glennie,  324 

Suggestibility,  99 

"  conditions      of, 

lOI 

"  defined,  100 

Suggestion,  99 

Sum   of   pleasures   not   happi- 
ness, 160 

Surprise,  161 

Survivals  in  culture,  339 

Sutherland,  A.,  69,  70 

Sympathy,  active,  173,  178 
"  in  animals,  96 

"  primitive,  94 


Tarde,  G.,  94,  105,  333 

Teleology,  progressive,  269 

Temperament,  120 

Tender  emotion  and  anger,  74 

Terror,  52 

Theory  of  action,  a,  359 

"  intuitionist,  385 

"  intellectualist, 

384 
"  pleasure  -  pain, 

373 
**  mechanical,  371 


Theories  of  causation,  325 
Thyroid  gland,  122 
Tiger  as  cause  of  fear,  54 
Torres  Straits,  people  of,  118 
Towns,   baneful   attraction  of, 

303 
Tribal  conflict,  296 
Tylor  on  primitive  religion,  311 

U 

Uncanniness  as  cause  of  fear, 
56 

Uniformity  of  human  mind,  21 

Unity  of  organism  in  be- 
haviour, 362 

Unreasonable  action,  8 

Utilitarianism,  8,  159 

V 

Variations  of  means,  361 
Vengeful  emotion,  145 
Volition  defined,  255 

"         (problem  of),  defined, 
242 

"         the  mark  of,  246 

"        scale  of,  256 

W 

Ward,  James,  54,  368 

"       Lester,  86 
Westermarck,  146,  148,  220 
Wonder,  59,  60 
Wordsworth,  77 
Wundt,  24,  250 


4 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JOX 
62 


Foiui  u-v—xom- 1 , no 


dj 


3  1158  00590  1235 


i^J^  SOUTHERM  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001035  205 


